Oral Answers to Questions

CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT

The Secretary of State was asked—

Rugby League

Paul Rowen: If she will make a statement on the support her Department is giving to rugby league.

Richard Caborn: Before I answer that question, may I congratulate Alastair Cook on scoring a fantastic century out in India? I think that this is only the sixth time in the history of the fantastic game of cricket that anyone has scored a century and a 50 in their first test match. I also congratulate Shelley Rudman, our silver medallist in the winter Olympics, and the rest of the team. They did a fantastic job. I want to pay tribute to the talented athletes scholarship scheme money that Shelley Rudman received from the Government. That scheme was designed by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State some 18 months ago. Silver today, gold tomorrow.
	Rugby league's recent modernisation was led by its superb chief executive, Richard Lewis, and I can see the game going from strength to strength. It is one of Sport England's top 10 priority sports, which is why Sport England has recently invested £11.5 million to build on the recent renaissance of rugby league. If other sports looked at rugby league for an example of what can be achieved in modernising their governing bodies, they could learn a lesson or two.

Paul Rowen: In December 2004, the Minister announced the creation of the national sports foundation, and the allocation of £2.5 million for rugby league, but I understand that no money has yet been allocated. Will he explain why and tell the House when rugby league can expect to receive its share of the resources?

Richard Caborn: That was £27 million of public money that the Chancellor had put into his Budget, and it will start to come on stream in April this year. The hon. Gentleman will know that we are still discussing with the national governing bodies and those involved in the regional structure how best we can dispense that money to get maximum value from it. I remind Opposition Members that this involves £27.5 million of public money, and it will start to come on stream in April. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will see rugby league getting its fair share.

Digital Television

Mark Lancaster: If she will make a statement on the development of proposals for the Government's targeted assistance programme for digital switchover.

Tessa Jowell: I hope that my departmental questions will continue to provide the political highlight in this place that they have done today. I should like to begin by extending the congratulations of the whole House to our British Oscar winners: Rachel Weisz; Nick Park and Steve Box; and Martin McDonagh. They are examples of the excellence of the British film industry and they all deserve our praise.
	Ofcom will shortly publish data showing that the proportion of households with a digital television has now reached 70 per cent. That is an important landmark. We must now ensure that the principle of universal free-to-view television continues, and, to ensure that no one is left behind, we will provide specific help to the very elderly and disabled who are at most risk. The nature of the assistance will be heavily influenced by the trial that is under way in Bolton. This underlines our Government's commitment that the most vulnerable will not be excluded from the benefits of a digital society.

Mark Lancaster: I am grateful to the Minister for her reply. It is a special pleasure to see her here today, and I mean that genuinely. Is she aware of the special problems that Milton Keynes has in regard to the switchover? The city planners decided that individual houses did not need an aerial. Instead, they provided a central feed from an analogue mast. Furthermore, some houses have deeds that prohibit them from erecting an aerial. In the light of that, the changeover to digital in Milton Keynes will be especially problematic, although many people view it as an opportunity to get broadband, which they cannot get at the moment. As Milton Keynes is a unique case, would the Minister be prepared to meet people there to discuss the way forward?

Tessa Jowell: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kindness and for his remarks of concern about his constituents. I am happy to meet constituents from Milton Keynes to discuss this specific issue, but he should be reassured that Digital UK is already in discussion with Milton Keynes council in relation to the specific problem that arises from the reliance on analogue cable. He can assure his constituents that Freeview will be available to them, as will the continued roll-out of broadband.

Patrick McFadden: Does the Secretary of State accept that many pensioners in particular are worried about not just the technology involved in digital switchover, but not having access to the many new channels and radio channels provided in that way? What is her Department doing not just to help pensioners with the technology, but to ensure that, as we move to that new technology, neither pensioners nor anyone else loses out on the expansion of choice in broadcasting that this entails?

Tessa Jowell: My hon. Friend makes my point precisely in relation to the importance of universal free-to-view access for digital television. He makes a second important point about the distinction between the need for information and the need of elderly and vulnerable people for equipment. That is the information that we are seeking to develop in the Bolton trial. The early indications are that the greatest need is for information on how to use digital technology. We will ensure that the service meets the needs of individuals so that no one is left behind.

John Whittingdale: Does the Secretary of State accept that surveys already show that a large number of people, not just pensioners, struggle with digital technology and that it will be just as important to provide help to the socially isolated as to the financially disadvantaged? Will she confirm that, as part of the assistance programme, she will provide financial help to voluntary groups so that they can be trained to give the help that will be extremely important to all those who would otherwise struggle to benefit from the switchover?

Tessa Jowell: I can confirm that for the hon. Gentleman. It is an important point and one that no doubt will be reflected in his Select Committee's report, when it is published, on the impact of digital switchover, but voluntary organisations have an important part to play, street by street, in identifying those people who are at risk of being left out through not understanding or not having access to the relevant equipment. We intend to address that in the way he suggests.

Alison Seabeck: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that her Department will press those responsible for providing the hardware necessary to take the digital change to ensure that the buttons are large enough for people with visual impairment to see them and for people with arthritic hands to use them? There is a real concern here.

Tessa Jowell: Yes, my hon. Friend makes an important point about the practical impact of switchover, and yes, we are taking serious account of that—talking to the manufacturers through Digital UK, which will produce guidelines with advice on this.

Gambling Premises

Desmond Swayne: What measures she is taking to increase the number of licensed gambling premises.

Richard Caborn: Parliament took the decision to limit the number of regional casinos in the first phase to one, and we are implementing the legislation on that basis. We do not rule out the possibility of asking Parliament to approve an increase in the number of regional casinos, but the impetus for any change will not come from the Government and we have no plans to return to Parliament on this issue.
	May I again underline the fact that the new legislation is about new protections, not new casinos? The implementation of the Gambling Act 2005 will ensure that all gambling premises, including casinos, are subject to tough but fair regulation by the Gambling Commission and the local licensing authorities.

Desmond Swayne: Will the Minister therefore rule out the possibility of increasing the number to eight?

Richard Caborn: As I said, we are prepared to consider doing that if the House decides that it wants to move there. I repeat that the Act has achieved everything that the Government wanted to achieve—that is, dealing with online gambling and remote gambling. We believe we have done that. If there has to be any change on regional casinos, it will be done through a consensus in the House. As I said in an Adjournment debate last week, it is for the Opposition parties to come forward and probably resurrect the amendments they tabled in Committee, when they were asking for four.

John McFall: Does the Minister agree that the debate last week was enlightening, but that the original pilot, focusing on one super-casino, is deficient? We need a pilot focusing on different parts of the country so that we can have more than one casino, which would reflect the social and economic factors in different communities.

Richard Caborn: I entirely agree. That is why the Government proposed that there should be eight casinos. Just before the election, however, the Opposition in their wisdom decided to reduce the number to one. We conceded that, because in doing so we secured the Act that we wanted, which protected the vulnerable and, especially, children from remote and internet gambling in particular. That was the purpose and the core of our Bill, and the question of casinos was subsidiary to it. If there is a wish for the number to be increased to any number between one and eight, we are prepared to consider that, but the Opposition parties will have to indicate their support.

John Greenway: May I remind the House that the scrutiny Committee suggested no limit on the number of regional casinos and said that they would bring about massive regeneration? As for the growth of gambling, does the Minister concede that, although children are banned from gambling premises, the growth of e-gaming and, before long, mobile telephony will cause problems? How does he intend to ensure that remote gambling is well regulated and that a proper regulatory framework governs those who gain access to such sites, in Europe or even in countries outside the European economic area?

Richard Caborn: As we all know, the hon. Gentleman chaired the Committee that scrutinised the Gambling Bill. He did so very ably and he has raised an important point. Yes, under the Act we have taken power to control remote and internet gambling, to the extent that a member state can do that. We intend to call a conference of Ministers responsible for gambling law in various countries to establish whether international regulation is a possibility. I agree that children and vulnerable people are being exposed to a new kind of gambling, or mechanism for gambling, that will be difficult to control unless there is international recognition in the form of regulation. We will call the international conference within the next few months.

Stuart Bell: Surely the issue of regional casinos does not just concern licensed gambling. It is also about job creation and investment in local communities. Ought there not to be investment in hotels, shops and so forth in the vicinity of casinos? Will the Government be a little more affirmative in launching their crusade for eight casinos, even if the full support of the Opposition is not forthcoming?

Richard Caborn: As we said throughout the Bill's passage, we wanted eight casinos, small or large, in eight regions to test the social impact on the community. We agree about the possibility of regeneration, but I repeat that it was Opposition Members who reduced the number from eight to one before the election, and it is for them to act. [Interruption.] We are not so naive that we do not know what wash-up is all about just before an election. It was the Opposition who forced the Government to reduce the number from eight to one. Let the poker faces opposite put their cards on the table. It was they who tabled an amendment in Committee providing for four casinos and then reneged on it because their leader thought it politically expedient for them to do so. They know that, we know that and the country knows that.

Malcolm Moss: On the one hand, the Minister's Department has overlooked a loophole in the law that has allowed a proliferation of casinos under the old Act. On the other hand, they dither about increasing the number of casinos in the pilot under the new Act. Why is that? The Secretary of State said last April that she reserved the right to revisit the number of regional casinos in the pilot and, indeed, under section 175(8) of the Act, she has the power to increase the number to the eight that the Minister so clearly wants. It is disingenuous of him to say that that requires the support of the whole House when an hour and a half's debate on a statutory instrument in Committee would do the trick. Why does he not get on with it?

Richard Caborn: As the old saying has it, when you are digging a hole, chuck the blooming shovel away. That is exactly what the Opposition are doing: they are digging themselves into a bigger and bigger hole.
	Yes, there will be an increase in the number of casinos provided for in the Gaming Act 1968. We have set a final date of 28 April for applications. For the record, we are talking about 54 permitted areas. We are not talking about the whole of the United Kingdom. As the hon. Gentleman knows, that is covered by the 1968 Act. I go back to the point: if the hon. Gentleman wants to move from one to eight, we will be prepared to do that. I repeat that we got everything that we wanted out of—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I think that there has been a bit too much repetition on that matter.

BBC Charter

Kitty Ussher: What mechanisms the Government plan to use as part of charter renewal to promote quality broadcasting by the BBC; and if she will make a statement.

Tessa Jowell: The insistence on quality for the BBC is important for many reasons, not the least of which is that it was that which the public insisted on most consistently and vociferously in the unprecedented public consultation that we have undertaken as part of charter review. I will publish the BBC White Paper very shortly. It will set out a number of ways, developed from the Green Paper, in which we will ensure consistency and high-quality programming as part of the trademark of the BBC.

Kitty Ussher: I thank my right hon. Friend for that extremely helpful response. As she continues to lead her Department into the future with her characteristic vigour, will she undertake to involve BBC staff and trade unions in the development of the White Paper and the charter renewal process?

Tessa Jowell: I thank my hon. Friend for that question. I certainly will undertake to do that. Last week, we met the BBC trade unions to discuss the White Paper and the kind of changes that would be necessary within the BBC, which is a matter for the BBC governors and the BBC Trust. The involvement of the trade unions is an important part of the BBC being fit for the next charter review period.

Michael Fabricant: Will the Secretary of State join me in praising the BBC for delivering a unique service, not only providing quality programming but delivering a large audience? Does she agree, however, that there should not be pressures on the licence fee driving it upwards? Will the White Paper make it clear that no Government initiative will force the BBC to have an ever increasing licence fee?

Tessa Jowell: The hon. Gentleman sets a series of potential traps in his question. It is established Government policy and part of the manifesto that digital switchover will take place between 2008 and 2012. We have also guaranteed protection and help for the most vulnerable. That is Government policy. The funding of that policy will be met through the licence fee, which in the Green Paper I indicated would continue throughout the next charter review period. That is a broadcasting cost and should be met by broadcasting income.

Barry Sheerman: If we are really interested in quality journalism and quality broadcasting, will my right hon. Friend encourage the BBC to ensure that all journalists see a film that was nominated for but did not win an Oscar last night, "Good Night, and Good Luck"? It shows an age 50 years ago when journalists and television stations had the integrity, courage, independence and honesty to take on witch hunts and to face them down.

Tessa Jowell: There is a bit more intrigue. I absolutely agree. "Good Night, and Good Luck" concluded the excellent London film festival this year. At that time, there was not much optimism that it would be distributed more widely. My hon. Friend is right. A BBC confident in its journalistic independence, seeking out truth, sits at the heart of our democracy and we all here have a duty to support that.

Steve Webb: The Secretary of State rightly mentioned that an essential feature of quality public service broadcasting is political independence. What changes does she envisage will be made to the BBC's governance structure to reinforce its independence of Government?

Tessa Jowell: Very simply, changes will be made to get rid of the existing and long-established dual responsibilities of the BBC governors for both the regulation of the BBC and for overseeing the management of the BBC, and to establish the BBC Trust, which will be responsible and accountable to the licence fee payer. The BBC is a unique organisation and it needs a unique form of governance to deliver its responsibilities. Its responsibilities are to the people who pay for it—the licence fee payers, the people of this country.

Bob Blizzard: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the BBC will be more likely to achieve quality if it competes on fair terms with commercial broadcasting, rather than on favoured terms? With that in mind, where are we with the proposal to require market impact assessments of proposed new BBC services, and of significant changes to existing ones?

Tessa Jowell: I agree with my hon. Friend up to a point. The BBC's existence as an organisation with an annual turnover in excess of £3 billion is an intervention in the market. We in this country do not have a broadcasting system that is determined simply by competition and the market—a fact that reflects a long-standing public consensus, which will continue. That said, it is important that the BBC's impact on the wider market, which generates choice and innovation for viewers and wealth for this country, be kept under review. As he rightly says, the rigour of market impact assessments is a very important way of determining whether the BBC proceeds in the public interest with a given decision at a particular time, and that will be very clearly set out in the forthcoming White Paper.

Hugo Swire: May I express my delight at the explosion of interest in the deliberations of this Department? I hope that we can look forward to similar interest in future. Although I understand that this must be a difficult time personally for the Secretary of State, we must not allow recent events to interfere with the running of her Department. The process of renewal of the BBC's charter is complex and involves billions of pounds of taxpayers' money. In such negotiations, what is needed above all else is transparency, accountability and credibility. How, therefore, does she answer the charge of the House of Lords Select Committee dealing with this issue that her
	"proposals for reforming the governance and regulation of the BBC are confusing, misguided and unworkable"?

Tessa Jowell: I take the House of Lords' judgment on this issue very seriously indeed, and when the hon. Gentleman reads the proposals—they will be published shortly in the White Paper—he will see, I hope, that we have taken account of the views of the Lords and of others who have commented on the new BBC trust structure. But I come back to the essential point: the BBC is a unique organisation in this country and it is not like any other plc. The BBC belongs to the people of this country, and it must have an accountable and transparent governance structure that reflects that relationship. We will ensure that it does.

Hugo Swire: Indeed, but Ofcom has criticised the Government's failure fully to address the future of public service broadcasting, while the BBC itself fears that the Secretary of State's plans understate the importance of the digital future. Industry speculation suggests that there is absolutely no difference between her original proposals—made six months ago—and those in the forthcoming White Paper to which she has just alluded. If so, how can we be confident that she and her Department have been addressing the very serious issues at stake here?

Tessa Jowell: Very often, it is better to address the facts rather than the speculation, and I can promise the hon. Gentleman that, once published, the White Paper proposals will reflect that considered judgment on precisely the issues that he raises.

Newspaper Distribution

James Brokenshire: What discussions she has had with the Office of Fair Trading and the Department of Trade and Industry on the distribution arrangements for newspapers and magazines.

James Purnell: None, although officials at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have had such a discussion. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wrote to the chairman of the Office of Fair Trading on 12 October 2005, pointing out that serious concern had been expressed about how a different system could protect plurality and serve the public. She asked the OFT to give these concerns appropriate weight in reaching its conclusions.

James Brokenshire: I am grateful for that confirmation of the representation that the Secretary of State made, as I believe that she shares my serious concerns that, if the Office of Fair Trading confirms its original opinion, it will have a significant impact on the industry, including retailers, magazine distributors and newspaper titles, and will also affect the wider public interest. What further steps will the Department take in the event that the OFT either confirms its previous draft opinion or fails to provide the industry with sufficient legal certainty and Ministers at the Department of Trade and Industry continue to sit on their hands?

James Purnell: The hon. Gentleman has been energetic in pursuing this issue. It is a matter of cross-party consensus that it is important to have an effective and independent competition regime, and we do not propose to change that. The OFT will have heard the concerns that he and other hon. Members have expressed and will make its decision in due course.

Music (Young People)

Wayne David: What steps her Department is taking to encourage young people to become involved in music; and if she will make a statement.

David Lammy: The Department for Culture, Media and Sport continues to work closely with the Department for Education and Skills to set out a shared vision for music education in the music manifesto. That will take place over the next five years and central to it is the involvement of young people in music education.

Wayne David: My hon. Friend will be aware that Wales is a musical nation—[Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] I will not burst into song. Will there be any initiatives in Wales to promote music to young people?

David Lammy: Wales is of course a musical nation and Welsh miners valley music is second only to gospel music in huge achievement. I know that my hon. Friend is an oboist of world class status, having played for the Glamorgan youth orchestra. I hope that he is pleased with the work that the music manifesto is taking forward and also with the work of Youth Music, which is ensuring that money goes in particular to our poorest estates and most deprived areas to get those children engaged in music.

Don Foster: I congratulate the Minister and his wife on the birth of their son.
	If the Minister is so keen on involving young people in music, why do the Government's targets for attending arts events include classical music, jazz and opera, but exclude the very type of musical events that young people are likely to attend? Why, for example, does the target exclude attending urban music, rock music or world music events? Are not the Government totally out of touch with young people?

David Lammy: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He knows that we consulted closely with the Arts Council in setting that target, but we keep it under review and it is right that we look at all the art forms that can contribute to participation by young people.

John Donne (Portrait)

Chris Bryant: If she will intervene to ensure that the portrait of John Donne in the National Portrait Gallery is not lost to the nation.

David Lammy: If the National Portrait Gallery cannot raise funds to purchase the portrait, I have no power to intervene in its sale to another party, as it is private property. However, if it is sold to an overseas buyer, it will be subject to the normal export licensing procedures.

Chris Bryant: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a uniquely British portrait? It is a painting of one of Britain's greatest poets, a man who was a priest in the Church of England and a Member of this House. He was also Dean of St. Paul's and wrote that great first definition of socialism:
	"No man is an Island, entire of it self".
	Will he do everything in his power to ensure that the present owners of the painting, who include the family of the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), perhaps lower their price, to ensure that it remains in this country?

David Lammy: There can be no doubt that John Donne is one of our great poets, but it is right and proper that we see how the process goes forward. The decision may ultimately come to me so I should not comment beforehand.

Patrick Cormack: Although I understand the Minister's reluctance to comment in detail and thank him for what he did over the Canalettos, will he bear in mind that the bell is tolling for our great galleries unless they have proper purchase grants for acquisitions, which they do not at the moment?

David Lammy: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Heritage Lottery Fund has funded £130 million-worth of acquisition purchases over the last 10 years. Of course, in the case involving John Donne, there is a bid before the National Heritage Memorial Fund as well. It is right that we have been able to acquire great works of art and keep them in this country. I have been able to make certain assessments once a decision has been reached by the reviewing panel, so let us wait and see what happens in this case.

Si�n Simon: May I remind the Minister and the Secretary of State of the words of John Donne about ephemeral excitements
	These burning fits but meteors be
	Whose matter in thee is soon spent
	and suggest that that which is durable, valuable and important not be sacrificed to that which is cheap, easy and immediate, and that that national treasure indeed be saved for the nation?

David Lammy: I commend my hon. Friend on his recollection of John Donne and agree entirely.

National Lottery

David Heathcoat-Amory: What proportion of funds awarded by the Big Lottery Fund in 200405 went to the four original good causes.

Richard Caborn: The comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon) show that those who do not attend the Chamber regularly miss an educational and cultural experience.
	The Big Lottery Fund is the operating name of the National Lottery Charities Board and the New Opportunities Fund, until the National Lottery Bill goes through Parliament. They work together. Both bodies continue to distribute funding solely within their existing good cause areas, so one third is distributed to the original good causes of charitable expenditure, and two thirds to the new good causes of environment, health and education introduced by the Government in 1998.

David Heathcoat-Amory: Why have the Government abandoned the additionality principle, whereby lottery funds are supposed to be in addition to taxpayer funds and not a substitute for them? Will the Minister comment specifically on the latest annual report of the Big Lottery Fund, which shows funding to, for instance, school learning and child care and cancer and stroke treatment, which are Government responsibilities? Is not he ashamed that the Government have plundered the lottery fund in that way, in defiance of the principle on which the national lottery was foundedat that time with Labour party agreement?

Richard Caborn: In taking the Bill through Parliament over the past few months, there has been a background of wide consultation with the British public as to what they actually want lottery money to be spent on and how additionality can be justified. The results of the consultations, which are on the public record and have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses, showed clearly that the public wanted that money to be spent on health and education. We have held discussions with all the distributing bodies and I hope that in their annual reports they will give account of additionality for their fundsthe first time that we have been able to do that. The distributing bodies will be accountable through their annual reports, which have been deposited in both Houses of Parliament. If parliamentarians want to put questions, in the many ways available to them, it is open to them to do so.

Gordon Marsden: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government and the Secretary of State were absolutely right to broaden the terms as they did? Arts and education need to be brought together and the issues cannot be pigeonholed as the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) seemed to suggest.

Richard Caborn: Absolutely, and that is what came from the wide consultation that took place. The lottery is a fantastic institution. It is probably one of the best lotteries in the world, and credit is due to the Opposition and to John Major in particular for introducing it. We need to continue to refresh it and to consult the public, which we are doing, and the proof of the pudding is in the eating in that people are still playing the lottery and, as I say, it is one of the best lotteries in the world, so the public must have confidence in what we are doing.

Daniel Kawczynski: I should like to inform the Minister that the new MRI scanner at the Royal Shrewsbury hospital was paid for by the national lottery, because the local consultants put in a bid. I am very grateful to them for securing that money, but should not the MRI scanner have been paid for by the Secretary of State for Health?

Richard Caborn: The answer is no, and this is the difficulty[Interruption.] When we consulted the public generally, across the board, health was one of the   issues where they believed that lottery funds can be additional to that which is spent in other ways. Quite honestly, when we are talking about investing in the health service, no one can accuse this Government of not doing so. We are spending more money on the health service than that lot on the Conservative Benches ever did when they were in power, and this money is additional to that expenditure.

Sharon Hodgson: On the same point, does my right hon. Friend agree that the provision of hospices and MRI scanners, which would have taken many years of fundraising, are worthwhile areas of lottery funding and that another area of equal worth would be the provision of cancer drugssuch as herceptin, cetuximab and temozolomidewhile they are awaiting NICE approval?

Richard Caborn: Although we have laid out the broad principles about such money and investment, particularly in the new National Lottery Bill on the new lottery fund, the distribution of lottery funds is undertaken by independent bodies, which are at arm's length[Interruption.] I hope that the hon. Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) is not trying to bring into disrepute the integrity of the members of the lottery distributing boards. I say very genuinely that the public can have confidence in the distributing boards. They are made up of independent people of integrity who operate to terms of reference and do a fantastic job in distributing that money fairly and in a transparent way throughout the country. Additionality can be brought to Parliament through the annual reports of the distributing bodies.

Hugh Robertson: The reverse side of that argument is that, since the creation of the New Opportunities Fund in 1998, more than 3 billion, according to the national lottery website, has been removed from sport, arts, heritage and charities. Given that it is exactly eight months to the day since we won the bid in Singapore, how can the Government deliver on the many commitments made at the time of the bid to elite athletes, and about mass participation and a cultural festival if sport and the arts have suffered a de facto cut of 1.5 billion?

Richard Caborn: I do not accept that. Some 750 million has come from the New Opportunities Fundnow the Big Lottery Fundto invest in school sports facilities throughout the country. That is true right across the board. Lottery money is now being invested with much more value added than previously, when it was very siloed. The British public were telling us very clearly that they want us to take an holistic approach, not one that is departmentalised in the way that the previous Administration had us do it.

Henry Bellingham: When she next expects to meet representatives of the Big Lottery Fund to discuss lottery grants to village halls and community centres.

Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Richard Caborn: That was a resounding expression of confidence in the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham).
	To date the lottery has awarded 258 million to village and community halls. The Big Lottery Fund will make 50 million available over three years through a community buildings programme to benefit projects across England. I have no plans to meet its representatives to discuss that at present.

Henry Bellingham: Has the Minister seen a recent report that revealed a 400 million backlog of repairs to village halls across the country? He mentioned the Big Lottery Fund making available 50 million over the next four years, but what hope can he hold out to village halls in my constituency, including the one at Terrington St. John, which has twice had its bid turned down? Is there not a danger, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) pointed out, that we are seeing substitution for Government expenditure and not enough money being spent on good causes in rural areas?

Richard Caborn: I do not think that that is true. In an Adjournment debate a few weeks ago, the investment of 50 million in village halls was welcomed. I have not read the report about the 400 million, but if the hon. Gentleman sends me a copy, I will read it and then write to him and put my reply in the Libraries of both Houses. Through the Millennium Commission and what we are doing now through the Big Lottery Fund, the investment in village halls and community halls is at a level that is commensurate with the role that they play in communities.

CHURCH COMMISSIONERS

The hon. Member for Middlesbrough, representing the Church Commissioners, was asked

Dioceses

Mark Pritchard: What assessment the commissioners have made of the financial implications of the proposals to reduce the number of dioceses.

Stuart Bell: There is a draft Dioceses, Pastoral and Mission Measure which would enable a new dioceses commission to bring forward proposals for reducing the number of dioceses. Since the Measure is in draft, it follows that the commissioners have not made any assessment of the financial implications.

Mark Pritchard: I am grateful for the commissioner's response. When the assessment phase comes along, will he convey my concern that we should retain the dioceses of Herefordshire and Lichfield and recognise the valuable work of the suffragan bishops, the Bishop of Shrewsbury and the Bishop of Ludlow? The dioceses are historical and I hope that they will be safeguarded in any future changes in England and Wales.

Stuart Bell: I am grateful for that. The hon. Gentleman's remarks will be passed on to the appropriate commissioners. He should bear it in mind that the Church of England has 45 dioceses43 of which contain more than 13,000 parishescovering all of England, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, the Isles of Scilly and a little bit of Wales, so he is in good company.

Slave Trade Abolition (Commemoration)

Chris Bryant: What budget the commissioners have identified for the Church of England's commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807.

Stuart Bell: The Church of England is heavily involved in the ecumenical Set all free project, which will include publications and a major service at Westminster abbey. The commissioners are not contributing financially to marking the bicentenary.

Chris Bryant: May I urge the commissioners to contribute? The Church of England was very involved in passing the 1807 Act, even though there was some hypocrisy. The Bishop of Exeter kept 655 slaves until the time of the Abolition of Slavery Act 1833, when he received 12,700 in compensation. Will the Church Commissioners put a little more oomph into the celebration so that we can see an end to humbug in the Church?

Stuart Bell: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He goes back to 1807; shortly, we will have a question that relates to the next centurythe Church certainly has a wide span. He will note that the Synod recently called on Her Majesty's Government to give the highest priority to enabling legislation to bring an end to the causes and outcomes of slavery. Personally, I presume that the Synod will equally accept the enabling legislation for the Church to accept women bishops in line with his ten-minute Bill.

Israel (Investments)

Nick Gibb: What representations the commissioners have received on their policy on investment in Israel.

Stuart Bell: The commissioners do not have a blanket policy on investment in Israel. The hon. Gentleman is referring to a recent resolution from the General Synod which might be construed as a representation to the commissioners. As the Archbishop of Canterbury has said, there has been much adverse comment on the resolution. The archbishop has accepted that this has caused much distress and he has described this as a cause of deep regret.

Nick Gibb: I am reassured by that answer, which is a million miles away from the anti-Israeli attitude demonstrated by the General Synod. Does that not show how out of touch and extreme elements of the General Synod have become? Does the hon. Gentleman agree that in these times of growing anti-Semitism across Europe, the Church of England should concentrate on promoting the Christian message, rather than fuelling anti-Semitism through politically motivated anti-Israeli motions that are more redolent of 1970s student unions than serious and compassionate policy making?

Stuart Bell: In the words of the Scripture, those who have ears, let them hear. However, the Synod did not resolve to disinvest in companies dealing with Israel, nor has it the power to do so.

Cemeteries

Gordon Prentice: What assessment has been made of the requirement for new churchyard cemeteries in the next century?

Stuart Bell: As I indicated earlier, the Church takes a long view, but since we are hardly into the sixth year of the present century it follows that the Church has not made any assessment for new churchyard cemeteries in the next.

Gordon Prentice: That was a disappointing reply. There is a grave shortage. Is my hon. Friend aware that in inner London the supply of land is virtually exhausted, and that by the end of the century there will be nowhere to bury people in outer London? What is the view of the Church Commissioners on the possibility of burying people one on top of another? Are there any theological reservations about that?

Stuart Bell: I always enjoy a question from my hon. Friend. I am sure that he does not mind a jocular response from me from time to time. The duty to provide a place of burial lies with the secular authority. The operation and management of Church of England burial grounds is a matter for individual parochial church authorities. No central records are kept. Clearly, the matter that the hon. Gentleman raises is an important one, and it will be taken seriously by the Church.

Historic Ecclesiastical Buildings

Michael Fabricant: What discussions the commissioners have had on the merits of educating visitors to cathedrals and historic ecclesiastical buildings on the costs of maintaining them.

Stuart Bell: The commissioners support the Church Heritage Forum statement Building Faith in Our Future, which examines not only the immense benefit these buildings bring to the nation but also the cost of their upkeep.

Michael Fabricant: The hon. Gentleman may recall that we discussed this issue in the House a month ago. I inadvertently told him that most people volunteer to give the full amount that is being asked by cathedrals when people visit them. It seems that the practice in Lichfield is that more than half the people visiting the cathedral choose to pay nothing. Of the 4 that is asked of them, an average of only 80p is given by the half who do pay something. Will the hon. Gentleman condemn this sort of scrooge-like behaviour? Does he agree that now is a particularly good time to visit Lichfield cathedral, given the discovery of the Lichfield angel, which was carved some 1,000 years ago and was recently found in immaculate condition? The angel is now on show.

Stuart Bell: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is not surprised to know that I also read Hansard. I read his point of order on 2 February, when he put the record straight. I know also that Mr. Deputy Speaker said that he would not comment on the hon. Gentleman's remarks. However, I should congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the fact that he is doing an excellent job advertising the special merits of Lichfield cathedral. I am sure that he is telling his constituents to see the recently excavated 18th century carving of the Lichfield angel.

Michael Fabricant: Eighth century.

Stuart Bell: Indeed, 8th century, if that is not what I said.
	The next time the hon. Gentleman is there, he may perhaps stand outside with a begging bowl and ask people to pay their dues.

David Taylor: When my hon. Friend is next in contact with the cathedrals and dioceses throughout the country, will he encourage them not to be shy about charging entry to cathedrals given the evidence and experience at Westminster abbey, which is only a few yards away from this place, where the introduction of admission charges to discourage the use of the abbey as a clearing house for London tourist guides has been successful and has not reduced the number of people who genuinely want to visit one of the historic treasures of the United Kingdom?

Stuart Bell: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He will be aware that cathedrals receive only 1 million per year in English Heritage grants although they generate 151 million in direct and indirect spending for their cities. Anyone who passes Westminster abbey any day of the week will testify to the popularity of the venue. It is one of the top tourist attractions in the city. In a sense, it charges, and it is a worthwhile charge. I would encourage other cathedrals to follow its example.

ELECTORAL COMMISSION COMMITTEE

The hon. Member for Gosport, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, was asked

Local Election Turnouts

Philip Hollobone: What assessment the Electoral Commission has made of the likely impact on voter turnout of the process of planning for the 2007 local authority elections.

Peter Viggers: The Commission advises me that it has undertaken no such assessment and has no plans to do so. However, research into public attitudes to voting at this year's local elections in England is planned as part of the commission's ongoing research programme on public participation.

Philip Hollobone: Does my hon. Friend share my concern, and will he convey my concern to the commission, that the Government's enthusiasm for the imminent reorganisation of local government could well impact on the electoral turnout in the 2007 elections if people are under the misapprehension that their vote will not be important because the authorities will not be around for that much longer?

Peter Viggers: Individuals would indeed be under a misapprehension if they thought that the Government had said that they intended to cancel the local government elections scheduled for 2007, as they have said no such thing. Decisions on local government governance are primarily a matter for the Government, although under current legislation the Secretary of State must seek the commission's advice before changing the structure of local government in any particular two-tier area.

Louise Ellman: I am pleased to note that Liverpool has been identified as one of the areas where the Electoral Commission will conduct a pilot study to encourage voter turnout. Will that work include engaging with local communities?

Peter Viggers: I can confirm that it is the Government's intention to consult local government communities and other individuals, including local government figures and leading public bodies.

Don Foster: Will the hon. Gentleman share with the commission my view that a key reason for low turnout in local elections is the fact that many people do not believe that local councils have the power to address local needs, because a high proportion of the money spent by local councils comes from central Government with strings attached? Would it not be better if we increased the proportion of money spent and raised locally with a corresponding reduction in national income tax?

Peter Viggers: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point in his own way, but it would not be appropriate for me to enter into dialogue with him on the subject. However, he will agree that local government does indeed have considerable decision-making capacity, and I urge him to encourage others to vote in local government elections.

Jim Cunningham: May I ask the hon. Gentleman to ask the Electoral Commission to look at the reduction in the number of polling stations up and down the country over the years, as it could be a factor contributing to low turnouts, particularly at local elections?

Peter Viggers: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I shall certainly raise that issue with the Electoral Commission.

CHURCH COMMISSIONERS

The hon. Member for Middlesbrough, representing the Church Commissioners, was asked

Redundant Churches

Peter Bone: How many churches have become redundant in the last three years; and what estimate he has made of the number likely to become redundant in 2006.

Stuart Bell: Seventy-four churches have been declared redundant in the last three years. The underlying annual figure for church closures is 25 to 30 and we have no evidence to suggest that the number of church closures in 2006 will exceed the norm.

Peter Bone: Does the hon. Gentleman share the concern that I feel every time I see a church that is now a caf or an office or, even worse, derelict? Will the Church Commissioners use every endeavour to save as many churches as possible?

Stuart Bell: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. It is always a matter of sadness when a church closes butI accept that the hon. Gentleman's question does not go as wide as thismany churches are opening. He may have an interest in St. Barnabas, Peterborough, which is an unlisted church that was closed two years ago. The city council proposes to acquire the building and curtilage for a wide variety of civic and community uses. The redundancy scheme providing for that was made yesterday, and we hope to complete the sale by the end of the month.

ELECTORAL COMMISSION COMMITTEE

The hon. Member for Gosport, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, was asked

Overseas Voters

Nigel Evans: What steps the commission is taking to encourage greater participation of overseas voters at the next general election.

Peter Viggers: The commission informs me that as the next general election approaches, it will again run a dedicated public awareness campaign to encourage eligible overseas residents to participate. The number of overseas voters registered doubled between 2004 and 2005, but I must add that the numbers registered remain extremely small.

Nigel Evans: Is not the fact that the number remains extremely small part of the problem? Helena Kennedy produced a report last week on the need to encourage more people to vote and, indeed, suggested lowering the age of eligibility to 16. Millions of people, however, are eligible to vote but do not know that they are, so we ought to spread the word now to encourage people to register. Indeed, we should make it far easier for people who are eligible to complete the process of registration.

Peter Viggers: There are some 15 million British citizens overseas, of whom a considerable number are eligible to register as they have lived overseas for fewer than 15 years. There are 45 constituencies without any overseas registered voters at all, but there are four overseas voters registered in the Ribble Valley constituency. If I were the hon. Member for Battersea (Martin Linton), with a majority of 163, I would contemplate the fact that 150 overseas voters are registered in that constituency. Individual Members may wish to take those facts and figures into account.

Peter Bottomley: Could the Commission advise Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions to tell British citizens overseas with whom they are in contact that they can register?

Peter Viggers: The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and other bodies have been assiduous. They have produced an overseas voter leaflet and distributed it in conjunction with the FCO, they have advertised in newspapers read by British citizens overseas, there has been public relations activity and information has been provided online, but I shall certainly consider the point raised by my hon. Friend.

CHURCH COMMISSIONERS

The hon. Member for Middlesbrough, representing the Church Commissioners, was asked

Marriage

Andrew Selous: What proportion of the Church's central funds are allocated to marriage preparation and marriage support activities.

Stuart Bell: The Church is a diverse body and much of the work on marriage preparation and support is provided through organisations and clergy and laity throughout the land. The Church nationally funds a marriage and family life adviser.

Andrew Selous: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that answer, and I particularly commend the support that I have received from the diocese of St. Albans and my own bishop, the Bishop of Bedford, in this important area, but can the hon. Gentleman tell the House what proportion of funding and what importance centrally the Church places on this aspect of its work?

Stuart Bell: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. The figures are not to hand, but I shall be glad to send them to him. I have, however, read with interest about the launch of a community marriage policy in the hon. Gentleman's constituency. His search for local volunteers to act as a couples mentor is welcomed, and he will know that he can find thousands of such mentors in the form of parish priests across the country.

Points of Order

David Winnick: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I know that you wanted to get through questions as quickly as possible, and indeed the second half have all been completed. May I, for the record, point out that there is another point of view in addition to that given by the Second Church Estates Commissioner, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) at Question 22? There was no opportunity for that point of view to be expressed, but it should be said that many of us are deeply concerned at the demolition of properties in the occupied territories.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman is a sufficiently experienced Member of the House to know that he must not continue the debate under the guise of a point of order. I was quite aware of the importance of the matter, but equally, the balance of questions between the two hon. Gentlemen answering was such that I wanted to try to ensure that the Member representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission was reached, so that those questions could be put.

Celia Barlow: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. One week ago today, my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) raised a point of order about the visit by three Liberal Democrat MPs to his constituency without prior notice. You ruled that it is customary that when hon. Members visit another's constituency for political reasons, they notify that Member in advance. The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) visited my constituency, Hove and Portslade, last month and attended St. Patrick's night shelter, which currently has funding difficulties. I have been in correspondence with all the parties concerned with the shelter. It is a sensitive local issue, which I consider highly unsuitable to become a political football in an uninspiring leadership campaign. Will you raise awareness of the rule among hon. Members? After last Thursday's result, the hon. Gentleman might find it opportune to spend more time in his own constituency, rather than in mine.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I can only say to the hon. Lady what Mr. Speaker has said on many occasions and what I said most recently: it is a general courtesy between Members that when they visit another constituency for political purposes, prior notification should be given. We are all on an equal basis in the House and we should all respect each other's rights in relation to our constituencies. That is on the record again. Hopefully, hon. Members read Hansard.

Orders of the Day
	  
	Police and Justice Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Charles Clarke: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
	The central objective of the Bill is to help build safer communities, and the Bill seeks to do that in two waysfirst, by taking forward our agenda for delivering real, sustained and lasting reforms to the police service in various ways, and secondly, by helping to create a modern culture of respect based on the needs, rights and responsibilities of the law-abiding majority, by implementing key measures in the respect action plan launched by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in January.
	Working with the police service and its community safety partners, we have made significant strides in reducing crime in the past nine years in government, and I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the police service and its partners, which can be justifiably proud of their record of achievement. However, more needs to be done. Crime and antisocial behaviour are still too high, and public expectations around quality of service are quite properly rising and need to be properly met by all public services, including the police. Further reform of the police is necessary, and the Bill includes measures for reconfiguring the police service to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
	The primary task of the police service is, and will remain, to prevent, deter, detect and reduce crime and antisocial behaviour. To achieve that end, we must first embed neighbourhood policing, which is central to every part of the proposal, in every community with improved police responsiveness and customer focus. Secondly, we must further modernise the police work force so that it is fully equipped to meet those challenges, which involve building an effective policing team between the police service and those who work with it. Thirdly, we must ensure greater involvement by communities in determining how they are policed.
	The Bill will contribute to these goals by ensuring that we have the right structures in place to deliver sustained improvements in performance, that the accountability framework for police forces and their community safety partners is robust and responds to the voice of the citizen and that the police and community support officers have the powers that they need to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour effectively.
	The Bill will impact on each of the five tiers of policingneighbourhood policing, the borough, which is the basic command unit level, the strategic force, the national policing institutions and internationallyand drive forward our modernisation proposals.

Keith Vaz: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that one of the central points of the proposal is a partnership between local communities and the police? In particular, we must ensure that young people have a good relationship with the police, which means providing them with good local facilities. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety visited Leicester on Friday, when she saw such facilities, which are key to building a strong and positive relationship between young people and the police.

Charles Clarke: As my hon. Friend has said, that partnership is central to the proposal. When we fight crime, it is not simply a matter for the policeit is a matter for the police working with every agency concerned. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety has told me about her visit and how impressed she was by what is happening. Better youth facilities are a key factor.

Jim Cunningham: I note that my right hon. Friend has made tremendous progress in certain areas in the fight against crime. However, will he clarify the situation in the west midlands, where we are getting mixed signals about the transitional costs of amalgamation? Are West Midlands police and the other police forces wholly behind the change?

Charles Clarke: The Bill does not specifically concern the force amalgamations in the west midlands to which my hon. Friend referred. West Midlands police, Staffordshire police and Warwickshire police are strongly in favour of the change, and West Mercia police is not, which is why I gave notice last week that I intend to lay an order in four months' time to bring about that change following the proper statutory period of consultation.

Mark Pritchard: One reason why West Mercia police is not in favour of the proposal to amalgamate into a larger force is that market towns such as Shifnal, Newport and Wellington in my constituency will experience less neighbourhood policing rather than more neighbourhood policing. The chief of police will be in Birmingham rather than in the next-door county, which is the current situation.

Charles Clarke: That perception is utterly wrong. When a major issue such as a tragic murder arises in a small police force area such as that of West Mercia police, the only way to deal with the matter effectively is to move people from the neighbourhood level. The development of strategic policing is central to the proposal.
	The development of neighbourhood-level policing is at the centre of every change made in the Bill and in the reorganisation of police forces that was mentioned in the previous two interventions. What really matters to people is how crime and disorder are tackled in their own neighbourhoods. Issues as basic as abandoned cars, discarded syringes, truanting children drinking in local open spaces, graffiti and antisocial behaviour are absolutely central and put at the top of the agenda the method of policing that is at the core of the Bill.

Several hon. Members: rose

Charles Clarke: I will not give way for the moment.
	This means instilling a modern culture of respect at the neighbourhood level. The respect action plan set out a package of practical measures, which the Bill takes forward, to address the issue head on.

Several hon. Members: rose

Charles Clarke: I will give way in a moment, as is my practice, but I shall make some more progress before doing so.
	The Bill establishes a standard set of powers for police community support officers. We believe that their introduction has been a success and that taking that forward with a standard set of powers will enhance and develop that. Since their inception in the Police Reform Act 2002, community support officers have undertaken a variety of uniformed patrol tasks. Their high visibility has had a positive impact on reassurance in public places. They are accessible to communities and are key deliverers of neighbourhood policing. It is a unique role, distinct from that of a police officer. I am pleased that there is now recognition on both sides of the House of the true value of CSOs. But if CSOs are to play a full part in neighbourhood policing teams, they need appropriate powers to deal with the day-to-day problems that they encounter on the street without necessarily having recourse to a police officer. Standardisation will also end the confusion felt by the public about what powers CSOs have in their local area.
	CSOs' local knowledge of young people makes them well placed to play a valuable role in dealing with truancy. The Bill therefore provides chief officers with the option of designating that power to their CSOs.

Several hon. Members: rose

Charles Clarke: When I come to the end of the phase of my speech to do with neighbourhood policing, I will give way to Members who have comments or questions on that.
	On parenting orders and contracts, we believe that effective parenting is one of the key drivers in preventing children from offending and engaging in antisocial behaviour. It is vital that the police and other crime reduction partners are supported at the local neighbourhood level by parents in creating a strong society based on mutual respect. In tackling poor parenting and providing proper support for families where it is needed, we must be aware that that is the best course of action, and we are investing substantial resources in that. In the very small number of cases where parents are not willing to engage, the Bill widens the range of agencies that can enter into parenting contracts and apply for parenting orders to secure the engagement of parents. Parenting orders are already highly successful where they are used by local authorities to combat truancy, and by youth offending teams. Youth offending teams successfully applied for 1,273 orders in the last financial year alone. The breach rate is low, and most parents subject to an order grow to value the support that they receive. Indeed, many wish that they had received such support earlier and make an articulate statement of that.
	Finally in this section of my speech, I turn to conditional cautions. To tackle low-level crime and antisocial behaviour effectively, we need tools that bring rapid relief to communities and send a clear signal that such behaviour is unacceptable. Conditional cautions can be used for adult offenders who admit their guilt and are willing to comply with the conditions specified in the caution. They have already been operating successfully in six areas, starting in December 2004, and we anticipate implementing them across the country in the next 18 months. They can provide an appropriate response to low-level offending without a potentially lengthy court process and free up court time to deal with more complex cases.
	The conditions that can be attached to a conditional caution are currently limited to direct rehabilitation or reparation. While those conditions have given good results, experience has shown that widening their scope would mean that conditional cautions could be used in more cases. The Bill will enable conditional cautions to involve the offender paying a fine or undertaking up to 20 hours of unpaid workfor example, making reparation to the community by clearing up litter from a park. In that way, offenders will be giving something back to the community, and more quickly and directly than if they had gone to court.
	I will now pause for a moment to give way to one or two Members who wanted to ask questions.

Philip Davies: Does the Home Secretary agree that neighbourhood policing is not just about community support officers and that local police stations also play an important part? West Yorkshire police recently proposed to close Bingley and Shipley police stations' public helpdesks to save money. Will the Home Secretary take action to safeguard local police stations that command widespread public support?

Charles Clarke: Local policing is central to neighbourhood policing and other matters. One of the exciting things that is happening in many parts of the countryI believe that that includes West Yorkshireis the opening of police facilities in a wide range of areas such as schools, shopping centres and so on. Chief constables must examine the overall policing presence in their community, including the existing stations, and determine the best way in which to make an impact on their local communities. Much of the police estate was built decadessometimes even centuriesago, and reconfiguring it to fit modern policing need is a key responsibility of the police in West Yorkshire or anywhere else. That is what they have to do, and they will do precisely that.

Ian Lucas: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the remoteness of community safety partnerships is one of the weaknesses of the current system? In my constituency, excellent work is being done with neighbourhood policing but individual constituents approach me rather than their community safety partnership, about whose existence they know nothing, when a problem arises. What will the Bill do to solve the problem and make community safety partnerships more accountable?

Charles Clarke: I shall deal specifically with that shortly because the coterminosity of the basic command unit and the local district council is critical. I accept my hon. Friend's implicit criticismthe performance of community safety partnerships has been patchy throughout the country. I could take him to some where genuinely outstanding work has been done in exactly the way that he would like, and to others where there has been a more desultory state of affairs. A key element of the Bill is strengthening the partnerships so that he and all hon. Members can have confidence that their local crime and disorder reduction partnership between the police and the local authorities works.

Peter Bone: I welcome the initiative to put local policing at the centre of Government policy. Unfortunately, the reforms are having the opposite effect in Wellingborough because the senior police officer there will be moved next month to a neighbouring constituency, Kettering. I do not understand how that helps local policing.

Charles Clarke: I cannot speak about the specific case that the hon. Gentleman mentions. However, we propose the reorganisation of police authorities to reduce the pressures that can lead to moving a particular, respected local police officer to another locality. The purpose of the Bill is to make matters work in the opposite direction.

Jeremy Wright: I understand the points that the Home Secretary makes about standardising powers for police community support officers. However, in Warwickshire, PCSOs are permitted to travel only by public transport, which significantly limits their effectiveness. Will he be cautious about extending their powers without extending the necessary training and equipment? He will understand that my constituents welcome PCSOs as an addition, but not as a replacement for full police officers.

Charles Clarke: The hon. Gentleman puts the matter correctlyPCSOs are an addition, not a replacement. The PCSOs have been brought into the service under the command of the police as an addition to police officers. Of course, they need the appropriate training to deal with their responsibilities.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: Any extension of powers for PCSOs will inevitably begin to impinge on police officers' training. The House of Commons needs to understand clearly what powers my right hon. Friend intends to give PCSOs, how they are different from ordinary police constables, and how we can be assured that they will not impinge on the duties of those who are properly trained.

Charles Clarke: It is for that reason that the memorandum and guidance notes for the Bill set out in great detail precisely which powers will be held by PCSOs and which will not on the standardised basis. It is fair to say that many in the police, including some police officers, as well as some hon. Members, were sceptical about the merits of introducing PCSOs in 2002. However, it is also fair to say that that scepticism is now a great deal less. That is not to say that no issues remain to be resolved and I am sure that my hon. Friend will continue to raise them with her customary wit and humour, and I shall attempt to respond. However, I believe that PCSOs have made a major contribution and will continue to do so. We want to take that forward.

Philip Hollobone: If the Home Secretary is going to stop short of giving the power of arrest to PCSOs, will he consider giving them the power to disperse? As the law stands, unless a specific area is designated as a dispersal zone, PCSOs have a great deal of difficulty supporting full-time police officers in dispersing a large crowd of unruly youths.

Charles Clarke: That is a fair point that some PCSOs have raised with me directly from their personal experience. That is why we have set out a detailed schedule that will be debated in Committee. However, given the hon. Gentleman's contribution, I hope that he will acknowledge that setting things out in a clear way that runs across the country is the right thing to do. The House will decide how best to deal with the issue when we consider it in Committee.

Several hon. Members: rose

Charles Clarke: I shall give way twice more before I make progress.

Dari Taylor: I am delighted to hear my right hon. Friend say that the basic command unit and the local authority will remain in close partnership and that they will have a clear relationship with one another. But what about local residents? Am I reading the Bill correctly? Is it stating that if a persistent problem of antisocial behaviour continues to be unresolved by the police, the local authorities or the other partners, the residents will have the right to call those groups to account?

Charles Clarke: The House will not be surprised to learn that my hon. Friend, as usual, has got it completely spot on and correct. I shall make further comments on the detail of how that will operate in my speech, but it is very important that every community feels that it can successfully deliver the action that is needed to clear up their community. The Bill will help to strengthen that.

Mark Francois: I thank the Home Secretary for his courtesy in giving way again. He has already stressed in his speech the importance of maintaining the support of communities, but is he aware that, with regard to his proposed changes to police forces, all the methods that have been used so far to test public opinion in my county of Essextelephone or internet polls organised by local newspapers and phone-ins to Essex radio stationshave shown overwhelming support for the retention of an Essex police force in its own right and very strong opposition to proposed mergers? If he really believes in keeping the support of communities, will he take that into account before any changes are announced in the east of England counties? Will he give us an assurance that the Essex force will be allowed to stand alone?

Charles Clarke: We have already addressed this issue across the Floor of the House, and it is not a matter that is directly part of the Bill. As I said to the hon. Gentleman both across the Floor and privately, I will give him the guarantee that when we have proposals to make, we will make them and he can then comment on them.

Lynne Featherstone: I thank the Home Secretary for giving way again. I wanted to raise the issue of giving registered social landlords the ability to opt for parenting orders. Youth offending teams are very experienced in that regard and my concern is that registered social landlords might not be. What sort of training does he have in mind?

Charles Clarke: There will certainly be clear guidance but, to be quite candid, I am sure that the hon. Lady will acknowledge that there are real issues for the major registered social landlords. We need to try to ensure that we can deal with those issues as well. That is why we have provided the power that is set out in the Bill, but she is right to say that we require proper guidance on how that power is used. We will set that out as we go through.
	I now turn to the second level of policingat the basic command unit and borough level. As I said in response to interventions, partnerships between BCUs and crime and disorder reduction partnerships are absolutely essential, and I think we can do more. The key partnership operates at that level, but it cannot operate effectively if it works across administrative boundaries. Police forces across the country have made excellent progress already in bringing BCU and local authority boundaries into line, so that there are now only three forces that have certain BCUs that are not aligned with local authority boundaries. However, that could be changed, which is why the Bill seeks to place BCUs on a statutory footing and requires their boundaries to be aligned with those of local authorities. It also makes it a matter for chief constables to consult with key partners before altering BCU boundaries.
	We have established the whole process for crime and disorder reduction partnerships. Again, as I said in answer to interventionsI will not repeat it all nowwe believe that amending the structure of partnerships to reflect the changed environment since 1998, reducing unnecessary bureaucracy, enabling better flows of information, implementing national standards to ensure the best working practices and improving the accountability arrangements for partnerships are, based on what we have learned since the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the key means to improving the quality of the CDRPs. The purpose of the standards, among other things, will be to raise the profile of CDRPs with local authorities so that local communities can see that they are responding to their concerns and priorities.
	We believe, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor) suggested in her intervention, that it will be necessary to ensure that the BCU commander and other senior representatives hold regular public sessions to help the public to hold them to account, and that local people themselves should be able to get action on community safety issues that are of concern to them. That is the reason for the community call for action that is provided for in clause 15. It will give people a way in which to trigger action on the community safety issues that are of particular concern to them. Ward councillors will be given greater powers to take up problems on behalf of their communities. I would expect that, where neighbourhood policing is working effectively, there will be little need to have recourse to the community call for action, but it is important that the mechanism to empower action exists as a backstop.
	The third level of policing is the strategic police force. As the House knows, and as we have already discussed to some extent, we have already embarked on a process of restructuring to ensure that forces can effectively meet the challenges of the 21st century. Many of the provisions in the Bill are designed to ensure that the new strategic forces successfully reconfigure to deliver protective services to national standards and the public's expectations of responsive neighbourhood policing.
	We want to continue to strengthen the role of police authorities, first by ensuring that their members have the skills and experience necessary to undertake this challenging rolethat is not always the caseand secondly by conferring on authorities an express duty to hold the chief officer to account. We will also add further functions, such as a duty to promote diversity, by secondary legislation.
	Intervention is sometimes necessary to improve performance. Therefore, in addition to measures to ensure that strategic forces are effectively held to account, the Bill also modifies the reserve powers of the Home Secretary of the day to intervene in an underperforming force or police authority. I should stress, however, that I am not taking new powers; in the case of police authorities, these powers have existed since 1994, and since 2002 in the case of police forces. The Bill simply ensures that the existing intervention powers are fit for purpose. The changes made by the Bill draw on our experience over the past three years in embedding a performance culture and helping underperforming forces to turn around their performance. The Bill widens the sources of information that the Home Secretary can consider in deciding whether to exercise his powers, and ensures that that mechanism can be operated effectively.
	Also relevant to the whole of the justice system is the creation of the new justice, community safety and custody inspectorate, which is provided for in part 4 of the Bill. This new single inspectorate for the justice sector will replace the five existing inspectorates covering the police, probation, prisons, court administration and the Crown Prosecution Service. The inspectorate will create a modern, unified, strongly led and forward-looking inspection regime. It will support front-line staff by minimising unnecessary duplication of inspection and the additional work that that entails. Perhaps most importantly, by taking a holistic view of the justice system, the new inspectorate will provide an enhanced capacity to challenge whether the police, courts, CPS and National Offender Management Service are giving the public the best possible service.
	The Bill also provides the police with new powers to help forces to improve their provision of protective services, which was the driver behind the recommendations of Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary. We will enable the police to request passenger and crew information about journeys within the UK, to mirror provisions that we have made in respect of international journeys in the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill that is being considered in the other place. This power will greatly enhance the ability of the police to investigate serious organised crime and even terrorism.

Chris Mullin: I appreciate that the proposal probably looks quite logical on paper, but does my right hon. Friend think it wise to abolish Her Majesty's inspectorate of prisons? Under its existing management, it is extremely well regarded. At a time when our prisons are fuller than they have ever been and when there is a need for constant external pressure to ensure that we obtain value for money, is it wise to dilute those powers and subsume this effective organisation into one that is larger and blander?

Charles Clarke: First, there is no question of diluting the powers. That would be a mistake, and I agree with the implication of my hon. Friend's suggestion in that regard. Secondly, I certainly do not believe that the new inspectorate will be blander than the existing one. The interrelationship between prisons, probation, prosecution, police and others is an important one. I know that, from my hon. Friend's experience as Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, among other things, he understands how the discontinuities in the Home Office agencies have often given rise to problems. One purpose of the unified inspection regime is to deal with that.
	My hon. Friend's point is serious and it reflects concerns raised by Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons. I pay particular tribute to Anne Owers and her team for the work they have done in making clear and creative statements about how detention takes place, and indeed to her predecessors, but I believe that the joint inspectorate will be capable of dealing effectively with precisely those concerns. I give the commitment, as I have to others, that if this matter wants to be debated further in Committee, it can be. I do not think that the fears my hon. Friend expresses are well founded, although I respect his experience in relation to what he says.

David Howarth: With regard to the new powers to give directions to police forces and authorities, does the Home Secretary accept that there is something new here, because the requirement for a negative inspection report is to be removed? Does he not accept that, without that necessary buffer between him and police forces and authorities, he is, in effect, taking responsibility for the whole of policing in England and Walesboth its successes and its failures?

Charles Clarke: The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we are widening the sources that might provoke an intervention. That is because, for the sake of argument, something such as the Bichard review of the tragedies at Soham and what happened thereafter is not a negative inspection report, but a serious examination, which it would be quite appropriate for the Home Secretary of the day to take into account. That is why it is right to widen the basis of impulses that cause the Home Secretary of the day, at whatever time, to be able to look at what is happening. It is widening, as the hon. Gentleman says, but for good reason.

Martin Linton: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the advent of the Metropolitan Police Authority has done a great deal for relations between police and the public in London? While successive Home Secretaries and commissioners, as well as the advent of neighbourhood policing, have had a lot to do with that, establishing a police authority with a democratic basis has turned policing in London from something imposed from outside into a service that is not only of and for Londoners, but, increasingly, provided by Londoners.

Charles Clarke: I agree very much with my hon. Friend. That is one aspect of the Government's record in relation to policing of which we can be most proud. This is not historic: the Metropolitan police will establish the neighbourhood policing teams in London up to more than a year ahead of the national target precisely because of the encouragement of the Metropolitan Police Authority, as well as the personal commitment of the commissioner and his senior leadership. That relationship of positive encouragement towards protective policing is an example of accountability of the kind that the Bill is intended to strengthen.

David Winnick: Does my right hon. Friend accept that the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) is bound to cause some concern? The Home Secretary has praised the current chief inspector of prisons, but her predecessors, like her, trod on a number of sensitive toes and did excellent work over many years. There is a fear that the new post, despite what my right hon. Friend has just said, might dilute the excellent work being undertaken. I hope he will bear that point in mind.

Charles Clarke: First, it has been drawn to my attention by my Front-Bench colleagues that I did not pay appropriate tribute to the Mayor of London for his contribution to the improvement in policing in London, so I shall fill that gap by dutifully so doing.
	On the matter raised by my hon. Friend, the key point for me is the independence of the inspectorate, which must be spiky, particularly when considering the conditions of detention and the circumstances that can arise there. That is a fundamental issue, even compared with performance management more generally.
	I know my hon. Friend heard me pay tribute to the current chief inspector of prisons, but I also paid tribute to her predecessors in the role, and I do so again now. I have met them and discussed some of those issues with them as well. It is critical that that integrity of inspection of prisons, and indeed places of detention generally, is maintained, and I believe that our arrangements will do that.
	I know the concern that my hon. Friend is expressingI understand itand as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), the former Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, it is an appropriate matter to take further in Committee as we take it forward centrally.
	Perhaps I shall end comment on this point by saying that it would be a great shame not to acknowledge the very tight interrelationship, particularly on our agenda to reduce reoffending, between what goes on in prison, what goes on in probation and what goes on in the rest of the criminal justice system, including the courts.
	We have missed the opportunity of trying to achieve coherence for decades, and may have missed it for ever. That includes important subjects such as information technology and data on various people. A single inspectorate may help us to achieve that coherence, but I take my hon. Friend's point about the independence and pricklinessif that is the right wordof an inspector.
	It is important to consider the role of all the national organisations. We have already legislated to establish the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which from this April will take the lead in tackling national and international drug-smuggling and people-trafficking, but there is a complex web of national support agencies. We have the Police Information Technology Organisation, the National Centre for Policing Excellence, Centrex, the Police Standards Unit, the Association of Chief Police Officers, Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary and the Home Officea range of forces providing an array of services from the development of good practice to procurement, training and operational support.
	There is wide agreement, especially among the police, that the present configuration of overlapping support agencies is an obstacle to the promotion of improvement in the service, and that it needs to be simplified and clarified. That is what the Bill sets out to do. Following proposals from ACPO, it will establish the national policing improvement agency. The agency will drive improvement in policing. It will create a rationalised and more dynamic national landscape, and will give the police service capacity to deliver on the critical priorities set out in the national community safety plan, including the roll-out of neighbourhood policing.
	The existing organisations Centrex and PITO will be abolished, and some of their functions will be transferred to the NPIA. A number of the Home Office's policy development and operational support activities will also be transferred to the new agency, along with some of ACPO's policy functions. Its work will not, however, focus on the provision of day-to-day services, important though that may be. It will focus on the longer term, by helping to embed a culture of self-improvement in terms of performance, and of identifying and responding to the opportunities and challenges that the service will face over five or 10 years.
	We must recognise that in an increasingly interdependent world, work with international partners to tackle terrorism and serious organised crime will be increasingly important. We have therefore included a number of measures to strengthen policing at international level. Computer misusethe continued threat posed by computer hacking and denial-of-service attacksis one of the growing new threats that can be tackled only through extensive international co-operation. To that end, the Bill takes up a private Member's Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris) to amend the Computer Misuse Act 1990. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his initiative.
	The Bill provides a suitable opportunity for review of the Extradition Act 2003. As many Members will recall, the Act carried a complete overhaul of extradition law, some of which dated back to the 19th century. It also implemented the European arrest warrant. Following such a major reform of complex law, minor lacunae and operating difficulties have emerged in the first year of operation. The amendments in the Bill are intended to clarify and correct, and are essentially technical.

Paul Beresford: One aspect of part 5 has my entire support. As the Home Secretary knows, there has been close co-operation between some Conservative Members and some members of his team in dealing with sexual offences against children. In particular, there was co-operation during the passage of the Bill that became the Sexual Offices Act 2003. Subsequently, there has been discussion with at least one of the Home Secretary's Ministers and other members of his team on further measures that are necessary. One is contained in part 5, but there are also the issues of encryption and access to information on risk-assessed paedophiles. Would the Home Secretary be agreeable if the chief of the Metropolitan police paedophile unit, an academic known to his team, and I had further discussions with the appropriate Under-Secretary of State to see whether we can use this unique opportunity to deal with one or two outstanding issues?

Charles Clarke: I am very agreeable to that proposal. I pay tribute to the way in which the hon. Gentleman and others have worked with the Government. As he says, in this international world a number of changes are needed to establish a legal framework in which international co-operation can deal with criminals who, increasingly, work internationally. We should be happy to co-operate.

Boris Johnson: Does the Home Secretary agree that amendments on extradition would offer a good opportunity to clear up the grotesque anomaly whereby citizens of the United Kingdom accused of crimes against British interests in the UK can be extradited to America on the say-so of the American authorities, without any corresponding right in this country to demand that Americans should come here, without producing due cause? Is not it time that that anomaly was cleared up?

Charles Clarke: As is characteristic of the hon. Gentleman, his description of the state of affairs is wrong; it frequently is, I regret to say. However, the Bill offers opportunities to debate all those matters.
	As a package, the Bill makes a vital contribution to policing and justice from the neighbourhood level all the way up to international level. I commend the Bill to the House.

Nick Herbert: I apologise to the House for the absence of the shadow Home Secretary, who is detained in the north today.
	This is a curious Bill. It contains a number of disparate measures, some of which are perfectly sensible. All of us will support the principle of new powers to tackle child pornography and increased sentences for computer hacking. Other provisions such as the extension of summary justice will need closer examination in Committee, but this Bill maintains an unfortunate trend of increasing Government direction of the police.
	The Bill aims to prepare police authorities for the Government's proposed regional police forces. It does not itself propose police amalgamations. The Government are already proceeding with those using secondary legislation under the Police Act 1996, but the manner in which the Home Secretary is using the powers should make the House extremely cautious about conferring on him the Bill's proposed new powers to alter the role and shape of police authorities without proper parliamentary scrutiny.
	When police force amalgamations were last considered in the 1960s, a royal commission was established and it took two years to report. Legislation was introduced a year later. It was recognised that the structure of police forces is a fundamental issue on which the public, forces themselves and their authorities need to be properly consulted.
	The way in which the Government are proceeding could not be more different, but it is entirely in character. The Home Secretary's proposals to amalgamate forces were announced last September not to the House but in a letter to police authorities. He gave them just four months to respond. He attempted, in the words of the Labour chairman of the Association of Police Authorities, to bully and bribe authorities to agree to his proposals and to meet the deadlinea tactic that backfired spectacularly when not one authority submitted. The Government did all they could to avoid parliamentary debate on the proposals, only finally agreeing to a debate before Christmas on a motion for the Adjournment when we and a number of hon. Members protested to Mr. Speaker.
	Last month, the Home Secretary again gave police authorities an ultimatum, this time to submit proposals for voluntary mergers within just three weeks. Again, almost all the authorities concerned refused. Cleveland said no, Cheshire said no, Merseyside said no, Dyfed-Powys said no, Gwent said no, North Wales said no, South Wales said no, Warwickshire said no, West Mercia said no, West Midlands said no. Even Staffordshire, whose chief constable is leading

David Taylor: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Second Reading debate seems to be going considerably wider than the printed Bill that we have in front of us. Is the speech of the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) related to the thrust of the Bill?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) is about three minutes into his speech. Second Reading debates are customarily fairly broad. I am listening carefully to what he says and I trust that it will not be long before he more directly relates his remarks to the content of the Bill. However, he is allowed to give some background to his concerns.

Mark Pritchard: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I thought that I would try to help. The fact is that the Bill deals with local neighbourhood policing, and many of us on the Conservative Benches are concerned that strategic police authorities will detract from local neighbourhood policing. Therefore, it is completely in order that my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) is making the points that he is making.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am always grateful for help from hon. Members. All I ask as guardian of the Standing Orders is that speeches be related to the measure that is before the House.

Nick Herbert: Even Staffordshire, whose chief constable is leading the Home Secretary's amalgamation hit squad, said no. Every regional opinion poll conducted on this issue has said no. Yet just one week later, the Home Secretary announced that he would proceed with compulsory amalgamations, regardless. The report of Her Majesty's inspector of constabulary, Denis O'Connor, on which the Government are relying, said:
	The constitutional implications . . . are significant.
	Yet this crucial decision was announced by way of a written statement, slipped into the Library of the House at 2.24 pm last Friday, just before the House rose.
	Now, we are being asked to agree that similar order-making powers be given to the Home Secretary through this Bill, to allow him to alter police authorities' structure and functions. It is hardly surprising that the Association of Police Authorities has expressed alarm at the provisions. Its chairman, Bob Jones, said:
	The Home Secretary is now proposing to give himself power to change the role and membership of local authorities . . . and the bodies which represent them. Only Parliament, not the Home Secretary, should be able to do this.
	The Home Secretary claims that he has rejected the idea of a national police force, but the Government's reorganisations are moving us steadily toward this model. Twelve police chiefs, rather than 43, will effectively answer to the Home Secretary, not their local communities. As Professor Tom Williamson observed in Jane's Police Review,
	Legislation has concentrated power in the Home Secretary, who sets the National Policing Plan and specifies outcomes. In this new public management paradigm, chief constables have an executive function only which is to deliver the plan . . . Following force amalgamations, a few chief constables, reporting to a senior Home Office official in regional Government offices, will be even more centrally influenced and controlled.
	The new national policing improvement agency, introduced by clause 1, will not answer to police forces or to authorities; indeed, the Government have flatly rejected a proposal from police authorities that they should even part-fund the agency. The paymaster will call the tune and the paymaster is the Home Secretary. According to the Home Office, the agency will
	assist police forces to deliver . . . national . . . priorities
	and
	support national implementation of the Home Secretary's key priorities for the police, as set out in the annual National Community Safety Plan.
	In other words, the agency will effectively be the Home Secretary's enforcement arm, used to get the policing that he wants. There is already a police standards unit in the Home Officea development that the 2004 White Paper admitted
	represents a departure in terms of how the centre does business with the police service.
	How will the national policing improvement agency work with the police standards unit? How will both work with the new inspectorate for justice, community safety and custody?
	Police forces are besieged with agencies seeking to direct them. Such central direction has hardly been a success story in public services. The Government have introduced the Education and Inspections Bill to give schools more autonomy, and they introduced foundation hospitals for the same reason; yet, ironically, less autonomy for chief constables and instead, ever-closer direction by Ministers and their officials, is now the backbone of their approach to policing. Only a fig leaf of local accountability is to be maintained.
	The Government claim that proposals in the Bill to align basic command unit and crime and disorder reduction partnership boundaries will strengthen local accountability, but the number of BCUs has reduced from around 400 when the Government came to power to 225 today. The Government are pressing CDRPs, which are currently based on district council areas, to merge. A Home Office report, slipped out in January, gave the game away. It stated that the Home Office
	will be working closely with ODPM as well as with regional and local partners to ensure that we do not end up with merged CDRP boundaries which are out of step with the likely future structure of local government.
	What likely future structure of councils is this, exactly? Has Parliament been informed? Of course it has not. So far the Government's plans have been announced, in the usual manner, by leaks to the press.
	The Government cannot credibly claim that police accountability will be achieved through local government scrutiny when the partnerships are being altered to make them more remote from the people. In West Sussex, for instance, the aim is to reduce the number of crime and disorder reduction partnerships from seven to just one. The real decisions will be taken not in the partnerships but in Whitehall and by chief officers in regional headquarters hundreds of miles from local communities. Inevitably, they will be less answerable to local people.
	The Government's proposals for local police accountability are a mess. What happened to the Home Secretary's suggestion, repeated as recently as January, for local
	policing boards . . . to hold the BCU commander to account?
	If the much-vaunted community call to action in clause 15 gives residents a direct means of drawing issues to the attention of the police, where does that leave police authorities? What happens if the police simply ignore the community's view?
	The Government do not appear to understand the difference between accountability and public relations. The Home Secretary enthusiastically tells us that the public will shortly have the email addresses or telephone numbers of their local police officers. Good. But what matters is that the public actually get the response they want. Bournemouth police recently informed local shopkeepers that they were unable and unwilling to respond to the shoplifting of goods to less than the value of 75. Having the email address of local police officers in Bournemouth will plainly be of little use to small shop owners there.
	The Government claim that they remain faithful to the traditional tripartite arrangement under which the Home Secretary, police authorities and chief constables have balanced powers. The Home Office website claims that
	this three-way system prevents political interference in policing and avoids giving any single organisation power over the entire police service.
	The previous Home Secretary put an end to that. He insisted on firing a chief constable against the will of the local police authority. He even threatened to take direct control of policing in London if the then Metropolitan Police Commissioner failed to comply with his demands.
	This Bill will confer significant new powers on the Home Secretary to interfere with police forces and authorities. Clause 2 will give him wide powers to prescribe the membership of police authorities, and new powers to intervene in police forces. It will scrap the statutory duty on police authorities to determine local policing objectives, replacing it with additional powers for the Home Secretary. It will put basic command units on a statutory footingan apparently unnecessary provision, but one that the Association of Police Authorities believes may be the precursor to more direct Home Office control. The association has warned:
	These provisions represent a fundamental constitutional change, and a significant shift in the balance of power within the tripartite relationship.
	It is time to restore the balance and introduce proper local accountability to policing. First, where there are major reorganisations of a local force, there should be formal mechanisms to consult the public, including referendums where appropriatesomething that the Government are signally failing to do.

James Duddridge: Does my hon. Friend agree that, after a local referendum, the Government should be compelled to abide by the result? Should that happen at 51 per cent., or should there be a higher threshold?

Nick Herbert: Of course the Government should take notice of local referendums, but they did not do that in relation to the referendum on the elected regional assembly for the north-east. In spite of the overwhelming no vote by local people, the Government have continued with their objective of regional government by stealth. The creation of regional police forces is partly a step in that direction.
	Secondly, instead of police chiefs being made to answer to the Home Secretary, they should be made formally accountable to local communities, via mayors, elected police commissioners or sheriffs, or directly elected police authorities. Indeed, the Government proposed directly elected police authorities in 2003, describing them as
	a 'pure' form of local democracycreating a direct, transparent link between communities and the police board.
	What happened to that proposal? The operational independence of the police should be defined and protected. Local politicians should under no circumstances be permitted to direct the arrest of an individual or the initiation of a prosecution. However, they should be empowered to set strategic objectives for the police and to ensure that the objectives are met. Regardless of whether police forces are accountable locally or nationally, independent and transparent inspection of their performance will still be important.

Charles Clarke: I shall not respond to the general inaccuracies, but does the hon. Gentleman mean that he intends to give responsibility for the police in London to the Mayor of London?

Nick Herbert: The Home Secretary may know that we are consulting on a range of options to achieve local accountability of the police. The situation in London is more difficult because the commissioner has national and local policing functions. His accountability is already very confused and the fact that he is accountable to a number of bodies is problematic. We shall consider carefully how that should be resolved, but we will not resile from the principle, which the Home Secretary and the Government have not accepted, that police forces should be locally accountable. There is a fundamental difference between us. Whereas there are many things about which we agree in relation to neighbourhood policing, his view is that it is acceptable for the police increasingly to be directed by the Government, which is the essence of the Bill. Our view is that police forces should be locally accountable.
	Concern has been expressed by a number of interested parties that a combined justice, community safety and custody inspectorate, as set out in part 4, will lose the expertise and focus present in existing inspectorates. We will want closely to examine this issue in Committee. Against that concern, which we should take seriously, is the fact that the cost of public inspection doubled from 250 million in 1997 to more than 550 million in 200203. There may also be significant advantages in creating a broader and more powerful inspectorate that is not so close to a particular department and can maintain its independence from Government more easily. I suspect that I am not alone in fearing that Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary was too easily deployed by the Government to support their desire to merge police forces.
	When the Bill was published, the Home Office's news release proclaimed that it would
	instill a culture of respect in society,
	There is not a single measure in the Bill that begins to live up to that grandiose claim. The more high blown the rhetoric in the Government's respect agenda, the more certain we can be of its vacuity. Page 20 of the respect action plan is entitled Everyone is Part of Everyone Else. I feel sure that the whole House would be intrigued to know what that means and how it will assist the fight against crime.
	Journalists are being briefed that the Bill is a flagship measure, a crucial part of the Government's respect agenda. In fact, only a few of the proposals in the respect agenda have found their way into the Bill. Clauses 16 and 17 expand the use of parenting orders. Since only 31 such orders were made in the five years between June 2000 and 2005, reducing their use was not really an option. Yesterday, we read of an exciting new scheme under which Government super nannies are to descend, like Mary Poppins, on chaotic families. With the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety as the Minister for respect and nanny-in-chief in charge, this scheme is, according to The Sunday Times, the latest phase of the Government's respect agenda. Cynics who suspect that this is another worthless gimmick to be dropped or forgotten in a few weeks' time are missing the point. The story made the front page of a newspaper, so it has done its job.
	The respect agenda is entirely remedial. It embodies the Government's view that problems can be solved only by centrally directed executive action. The Prime Minister once spoke about tackling the causes of crime. Today his focus is on enhancing police powers. A number of the Bill's proposals rely on the extension of police summary power and summary justice.
	Clause 12 allows conditional cautions to include punitive conditions. Schedule 4 will allow arresting officers to set bail conditions. However, those proposals raise a number of serious issues. First, under the new bail conditions, the police alone will be able to make significant restrictions on someone's liberty, such as by tagging and with curfews, before they have even decided that there is enough evidence to bring a criminal prosecution. The power to impose punitive conditions in cautions will effectively allow the police to act as investigator, prosecutor and judge.
	The Magistrates Association has said that is extremely concerned that the courts are simply being shut out of the process, but that appears to be just the beginning of a fundamental shake-up of the criminal justice system. According to an obviously well-informed commentator,
	Ministers are drawing up plans to bypass the courts in the handling of hundreds of thousands more low-level crimes. Defendants who plead guilty to most offences with non-custodial sentences would, under their proposals, be sentenced by prosecutors, in consultation with the police. According to one document circulating in Whitehall, about half of the two million cases heard by magistrates every year could be processed without the costly and time-consuming business of a trial.
	The Prime Minister has persuaded himself that we have reached a watershed, where the rules of the gameby which he means the quaint idea that convictions require a trial firstneed changing to deal with not just terrorism, but antisocial behaviour. The judiciary may take a different view.
	The second concern is that the Prime Minister says that summary justice will be tough and hard, but it may, in fact, mean soft justice. The maximum penalty for a conditional caution will be 500an attractive alternative to a stiffer fine or even a custodial sentence for offenders committing actual bodily harm, affray, criminal damage, possession of class A drugs or carrying knives. Summary justice will increasingly mean two-tier justice, with a get out of jail with your credit card option for those who can afford to pay the fine or the fixed penalty notice for antisocial behaviour.
	The third concern is that we need to debate whether all police officers should be empowered to exercise summary justice. There might be a case for restricting certain powers, such as the setting of bail conditions, to more senior constables, who have the experience and  judgment to exercise them with discretion. Alternatively, we should consider whether such powers should be exercised at least with the scrutiny of a more senior officer. Those important issues need to be debated more thoroughly and examined closely in Committee.
	When the Bill was published, the Home Secretary said that it
	would help to free up police time to deal with more serious crime.
	In fact, there is just one measure in the Bill that might free up police timethe provision in clause 10 to allow chief officers to accredit trading standards inspectors to issue penalty notices. If the Government were serious about freeing up police time, the Bill would tackle the bureaucracy that prevents police officers from doing their job. It would end the requirement on police officers to record every stop that they make, filling in a foot-long form that takes seven minutes to complete. It would address the fact that it takes three and a half hours for an officer to process an arrest and that only 17 per cent. of a police officer's time is spent on patrol. It would give chief constables greater discretion over the employment of support staff, thus releasing warranted officers for front-line duties. It would introduce a modern and flexible pay and employment regime. It would replace incessant top-down demands for reporting, which sap so much time and morale across our public services, with simplified performance measurement. It would free up the police to fight crime, rather than to file. But the Bill does none of those things.
	The closest that the Bill gets to police modernisation is in clause 4, which would allow standardisation of the powers of community support officers. The balance of the exact powers involved will need discussion in Committee. We favour giving chief constables as much discretion as possible in that respect, as in many others, but those provisions are being introduced before we have had a proper debate about the effectiveness of CSOs. I strongly support their deployment, but the Home Office's own evaluation, published earlier this year, found
	no evidence that CSOs were having a measurable impact on the level of . . . crime or . . . antisocial behaviour.
	The Government's boast that they will recruit 25,000 CSOs by 2008 must be matched by both the funding to ensure that CSOs remain employed, because funding for them is tapered, and a more rigorous assessment of how to deploy them effectively.
	The fight against terrorism will remain at the top of the police agenda, so we welcome the power in clause 8 to extend police search powers in airports. For the same reason, we will be open-minded about the power in clause 9 to gather bulk passenger information for ship and aircraft journeys in the UK. We will want to be persuaded that that is necessary and that it will contain adequate safeguards.
	The Bill's technical amendments to the Extradition Act 2003 appear to be acceptable, although we will subject them to detailed scrutiny. We will seek to raise the issue of the UK-US extradition treaty that my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) raised in an intervention on the Home Secretary. It has not been ratified by Congress and its one-sided operation is a serious cause for concern. The treaty was sold as being necessary to deal with terrorism and serious crime, but is being used to require the extradition of offenders who have a minimal connection with the US. We will propose amendments to restrict extradition to the US under the Extradition Act to terrorism cases until such time as full reciprocity is granted by the US, and will place safeguards to ensure that, in future, extradition will not happen if the alleged crime could be tried here, under domestic jurisdictions, and there is no clear causal link with the US.
	In his Dimbleby lecture last year, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner called for a national debate on policing, and said:
	It is time to decide what kind of police service we want.
	This is the right time to have such a debate. Important issues are at stake: the independence of police forces; how they should be accountable; and how they should be organised both to accommodate the demand for neighbourhood policing and to meet the renewed threat of domestic terrorism. The Bill is not much of an answer to those questions. It reflects the Government's preoccupation with the incessant reorganisation of, and intervention in, public services, but it shies away from the tougher, but essential, work force modernisation agenda that would truly enhance police performance. It places new summary powers in the hands of the police, but it also weakens their local accountabilityan uncomfortable mix, particularly when public trust in the service has reached a record low.
	There are measures in the Bill that are of value, so we will not seek to divide the House. However, we will seek to improve the Bill to check the powers of the Home Secretary and to enhance the local accountability of police forces. We will want to scrutinise carefully the new summary powers to be granted to officers. We all want to see police forces that provide value for money, instil public confidence and are effective in the fight against crime. We will work constructively to achieve those aims.

John Denham: I welcome much of the Bill. I just want to make a few remarks that I hope are helpful about some of the issues that are raised by different elements of the Bill and some of the fundamental questions that lie behind it.
	There is a fundamental dilemma for any Government who try to introduce legislation that is designed to improve police performance. That dilemma stems from the nature of the police service itself. Police officers exercise unique powers, so they need to have a unique constitutional position. We cannot consider police officers simply as we consider employees of other public services. That is equally true of the courts. To maintain public credibility, the people who take decisions in our courts also have to have their unique position recognised by Governments and legislation. That is where the dilemma comes in for Governments who try to improve police performance. If police officers, or judges and magistrates, are simply left to themselves, and their autonomy so completely respected that no one tries to set the framework in which they work, past experience is that the result is like that in other public services, namely, that services become slow and not sufficiently efficient or self-critical when it comes to performance.
	The challenge for the Government is to create legislation that puts sufficient of the right drivers for improved performance into the police serviceand, indeed, the Courts Servicewithout overstepping the mark and beginning to take the decisions that it is fundamental to ensure taken by professional members of the service itself.
	Over the past few years, the Government have done a good job on improving police performance. When the Home Affairs Committee took evidence on police reform last year, we were told by all sides that the performance culture of the police service had been transformed at every level. Police authorities, police forces, basic command units and neighbourhood teams were much more focused on how well they were tackling crime and the fear of crime than they were five years previously, which is one of the most significant achievements to date of the Government's reform process.

David Taylor: My right hon. Friend mentions neighbourhood teams. Does he agree that one way of cementing and developing neighbourhood accountability would be to establish a more formal relationship between basic command unitsor, perhaps, neighbourhood unitsand neighbourhood watch associations? I went to the launch of the county neighbourhood watch association in Leicestershire and Rutland last Thursday and was immensely impressed by the work that is done. Leicestershire constabulary is good at the process, but there is no obligation on police authorities to have such relationships. Would those relationships not represent a way ahead?

John Denham: Such relationships are valuable, but for reasons that I shall set out I am not sure about the extent to which central Government should specify what is appropriate for each area. We must get such judgments right.
	There has been a significant change to the performance culture of the police over the past few years. The creation of the police standards unit, the publication of better performance data, the fact that most crime information is available to front-line police officers in real time and the greater public awareness of police performance have contributed to that. However, there is uncertainty about the way in which we want to drive performance in the next phase of police reform. The Bill contains several valuable measures that will work in the right direction and other aspects that might not be wrong, but need to be treated with caution so that when trying to get the best possible performance the Government do not overstep the mark of their powers.
	I want comment on five aspects of the Bill. On intervention powers, the Bill revisits territory that was well discussed when we considered the Police Reform Act 2002. The Government are trying, as I did initially in those days, to broaden the Home Secretary's powers of intervention on forces. I am inclined to think that hard cases make bad law. The Home Secretary referred to the Soham case and the Humberside police service in his speech and talked about the desire to be able to act in response to information that does not come from the inspectorate itself. However, as the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) said in an intervention, if the Home Secretary takes powers to intervene in a wide range of circumstances without any independent inspection of the police service, he takes for himself responsibility for the performance of not only every police force, but every part of every police force. The Government need to be careful about getting into such circumstances.
	I understand that when the Soham investigation was going on, there was frustration that legislation that the House had passed in the previous few years did not seem sufficiently adequate to give the Home Secretary clear powers to intervene. However, that is not quite the same as saying that whenever something happens, the question from the media and public to the Home Secretary of the day should be, Why don't you intervene now? You've got wide-ranging powers, so why don't you do something about it? There is a danger that Ministers will be under intense pressure to intervene when they and anyone who is close to the police service know that it would be better for politicians to stay one removed. I hope that the Committee will consider carefully whether the Bill puts the dividing line in exactly the right place.
	There is a powerful case for having a unified inspectorate that runs right across the criminal justice system. Many of the flaws in the system arise because of discontinuities, gaps and poor liaison among the courts, the probation service, prisons, the police and so on. I hope that in Committee careful consideration will be given to how the inspectorate will maintain a harsh light on the performance of individual parts of the system, and not only on the joins between the system.
	In dealing with the police service, it is not uncommon to hear police officers say, The problem is not really us; it is the way that we relate to the courts, or the way that we relate to the probation service or the prisons. There is often much truth in that. Sometimes, it is the case that the police and their performance are at fault. At present, Ministers have at hand a considerable degree of high-level professional expertise in Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary. I think that in future Ministers will want to be sure that they have an equally high level of professional expertise at their disposal in examining the police service itself as well as being involved in the entire operation of the criminal justice system.
	I endorse earlier interventions about the Prison Service. There is a particular responsibility on the independent inspectorate to be able to visit prisons. That is to turn up unannounced to examine the conditions in which we are holding people in custody and to have a focus on how the system operates as a whole. It must not divert from that essential role. I hope that the way in which that role will be delivered will be considered carefully in Committee.
	I shall refer briefly to the proposed national police improvement agency. It is something that makes a great deal of sense in that there are disparate organisations and a great deal of police force time is wasted in dealing with them. However, there is a difference between embedding professional expertise at every level of the police service and ensuring that the police service nationally can respond to current priorities. There is a role nationally for the police service to work together, as it has done over the past year on alcohol, or as it did a few years ago on dealing with street crime. Certain issues arise where getting everyone to work together makes a great deal of sense.
	Also important is having the latest and best investigative skills when dealing with murder, tackling fraud or investigating internet crime. Those skills must be learned and promulgated throughout the police service efficiently and effectively. One of the problems is that best practice is often developed in an isolated way and is not spread as quickly as it should be throughout the service. Accordingly, one of the aims of the National Centre for Policing Excellence was to be able to develop a high level of policing skills and to spread them quickly.
	In moving towards a national police improvement agency, it is important that those areas of professional improvement and expertise continue to be developed and that they are not lost by an organisation that is more focused either on volume crime or on the immediate policing priority of the day, whether that be gun crime, knife crime, burglary or whatever. I hope that consideration will be given in Committee to how the agency will be able to balance those different pressures so that we arrive at the highest possible quality of policing.
	As for the accountability of the police, I think that the Government have got it right in placing an emphasis on future police authorities and on those unitary council members who have responsibility for community safety measures, and also for exercising the ability to trigger community action through the local authority scrutiny committees.
	A few years ago, I was quite depressed when I thought that we would have a plethora of different structures, all floating around the area that we are discussing. In most instances of antisocial behaviour it is not only a policing matter. These instances will involve youth service intervention and environmental services, for example. To focus the ability to get a response through the local authority scrutiny structures seems to me to be the right approach. I say to the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who leads for the Opposition, that I think that his party is going down the wrong trackthis is a non-partisan pointin looking for separate elected bodies. There is a debate about how much local accountability to elected people we want in the police service. However, a proliferation of elected bodies rather than concentrating on local councils seems to be the wrong way to go. As I have said, I think that the Government have got it right.
	I conclude on the question of additional police powers, particularly conditional cautioning and the extension of the ability to impose parenting orders to a wide range of bodies, including social housing providers. What are broadly described as summary justice measures, particularly fixed penalty notices for drunken behaviour and so on, have achieved a great deal of success. The more that we use complicated and sophisticated sentencing and orders, the more cautious we must be to ensure that the people involved have the necessary expertise to operate effectively. If we start to tell front-line police officers that they will have responsibility for designing a sentence that includes rehabilitation, punishment and restorative justice in an effort to reduce reoffending in one go, the more pressure we will put on individuals who are not trained or expected to know how to do that job. The more that we expect people without the necessary expertise in family issues to make parenting orders the more we should ask how they will obtain that expertise.
	I am not against conditional cautioning or the extension of the use of parenting orders, but careful scrutiny of the way in which those powers will be exercised is required. I hope that in their consideration of conditional cautioning, Committee members will look at whether there should be a clear difference of responsibility between the arresting or investigating officer and the person who puts the condition on the order. It should not be too difficult to conceive of ways in which proper sentencing expertise is brought to bear on the conditional caution without the arresting officer necessarily being responsible for doing so. That would achieve the gain of not embarking on a substantial court procedure for a low-level minor crime, while creating confidence that there would be consistency of sentencing across the country for similar types of offence and ensuring that the sentences that are passedthat is effectively what the measures areare appropriate to the offender and to the offence.

Lynne Featherstone: This is rather a sneaky Bill and, potentially, a pernicious one. If not substantially amended in Committee, it will reduce the freedom of the individual, increase the power of the state, remove the autonomy and capability of bodies on whom we rely to hold the police to account, allow direct Government intervention in police business without any objective basis on which to do so, increase the surveillance society, extend summary justice, possibly damage community relations and run the risk of increasing human rights abuses in prisons. Even the seemingly welcome development of involving the local community in policing has the potential to create dangers and difficulties, so there is much to be done in Committee.
	To begin on a more amenable note, however, we support a number of the Bill's provisions. The incorporation of the Central Police Training and Development Authority and the Police Information Technology Organisation into a national policing improvement agency is a logical and sensible step forward. It almost goes without saying that we support the Government in their attempt to tackle better the problems caused by computer hacking. Given their penchant for creating surveillance databases, whether on national identity or on DNA, the security of those databases is paramount. Whatever the dangers they pose to civil liberties, they must be secure. Of course we support the Bill's proposal to tackle the illegal possession of indecent photographs of children and, indeed, the harmonisation and the extension of powers for community support officers.
	The proposal that the Independent Police Complaints Commission should take on the role of ensuring that complaints and misconduct in the immigration and asylum system are properly investigated is another welcome measure. Only last week, I visited the IPCC, which will now investigate complaints against immigration and nationality personnel and exercise specified enforcement functions. That new area of expertise is a perfect translation of its function to investigate police complaints. Such work is extremely sensitive and the proposal will not only create a better system but, equally vitally, it will improve public opinion of the system.
	Before I move on to the meat of Liberal Democrat concerns about the Bill, I shall touch on the section on extradition. I shall not go into detail as most of the proposals are technical. However, it is not lost on us that the Government's track record on matters connected with extradition is hardly exemplary, given that they have so singularly and spectacularly failed to deal with the unfair, unequal and embarrassing nature of our extradition arrangements with the United States. We give the US what they wantall they have to do is demonstrate to us that the person in question is the person they wantwhereas when we want someone, we have show evidence against that person.

David Heath: This is an extraordinarily important point, and one that we argued vigorously at the time of the introduction of theprovisions. Does my hon. Friend share my astonishment at the Prime Minister's response last week, when questioned on this subject? He suggested that the only purpose of the unequal and unfair extradition arrangements with the United States was to deal with terrorism, but we know perfectly well that they are being used to deal with fraud offences, which are in no way related to terrorism. Does she not find that offensive?

Lynne Featherstone: Indeed; my hon. Friend is right. The previous Home Secretary signed the treaty in Washington. We put it into force by statute, but the US did sweet nothing so there is no law to be executed on their side. We undertake our unfair and unequal treatment voluntarily. That sums up our current relationship with Americawe jump, even when we do not have to.
	I shall cover some of our primary concerns about the proposals in the Bill. We have serious misgivings about the Government once again seeming to believe that crime can be tackled directly from the Home Office and giving powers to the Home Secretary to dictate the form and function of police authorities. The Government clearly want to match their new super-size police forces with police authorities newly reduced in size, but the proposals will reduce local accountability and take away independence and autonomy. The Bill allows for a reduction in numbers on authorities, theoretically down to one member. Tempting though that might seem to the Home Secretary, I do not believe that it is the purpose of the proposal.
	Under the present system, the appointment of local authority members to such a body should reflect the political balance on the appointing authority or authorities, so the idea that each principal authority should have one seat on the new police authority and that that person should be the lead member on community safety will inevitably mean that the composition will reflect the majority party on the local authority. Applied around the country, that will not lead to political balance of any sort. Political proportionality, which has long been a tradition on those authorities, will disappear unless it occurs accidentally.
	The other aspect of authority membership that concerns me is the removal of the magistrate members. They are a specified component of such an authority, and they will still be able to apply as independents. However, in the five years that I served on the Metropolitan Police Authority, I observed that the knowledge and experience that the magistrate members brought from the criminal justice system was invaluable in holding the police force to account. At a time when we are aiming for joined-up working and joined-up technology so that cases can be chased through from the police to the criminal justice system, the proposal seems a serious and unnecessary change for the worse. There will have to be an extraordinary justification or rationale for dispensing with such a valuable component of what is meant to be an independent authority holding the police to account for local people. Perhaps that is the problemthe magistrates are a bit too clever and might frustrate the Home Secretary's direct intervention in future.
	The Home Secretary will be able to decide which issues a police authority looks into. That involves constraining the function of police authorities, which he will be able to control literally at will. If he believes that all or part of a police force is failing or may fail, he may direct the chief officer and/or the police authority to undertake specific measures to remedy or prevent such a failure, which will take place on his own cognisance. As has been said, in broadening the trigger that decides when he can direct police authorities, there is a risk that the power will be overused and misused. I would therefore welcome further explanation from the Minister on objectives, plans and reports for police authorities and on the Home Secretary's new role in relation to issuing such directives.
	Once again, it seems that the Government are trying to diminish local accountability by allowing Whitehall to dictate, intervene and direct. The shift of control to the Home Secretary without the need for a negative report automatically means that there will be less accountability. Although the Minister may say that such interventional powers will be used only as a last resort, we do not have a definition of what the Home Secretary means by failing and last resort. The power is a carte blanche for interference, and we need the Minister to clarify the terms failing and last resort.
	At first sight, the mini-safeguard on public engagement appears to be an innovative and welcome step, because it gives the local authority scrutiny committee a role in examining how persons and bodies responsible for tackling crime and disorder carry out their functions. As a Liberal Democrat, localism and community involvement play into our fundamental philosophy of power to the people, but we must build in safeguards both for the community and for the police. A scrutiny committee sounds great in theory because local people know what is best for the local area, but there are concerns about whether the provision could be misused.

Mark Francois: The hon. Lady has discussed the Liberal Democrat commitment to localism and local people. Will she explain how it squares with the Liberal Democrats' traditional support for regional government, given that when that concept was put to the vote in the north-east it was destroyed by a margin of 78 per cent. to 22 per cent.?

Lynne Featherstone: I am happy to explain our policy outside this debate, which is about the Government's proposals.

Mark Francois: Is that it?

Lynne Featherstone: Yes, that is it.
	Could the proposal allow one persistent, complaining constituent to divert resources on unreasonable complaints? I am a local councillorI am sure that other Members are or have been local councillorsand it is not unknown for those who should the loudest for our attention to hijack resources, time and issues on a repeated and regular basis. Those who need police action and who cannot get a police response will not necessarily trigger that function or use that power.
	On the extension of powers on antisocial behaviour, youth offending teams will be able to issue parenting orders if they believe not only that a child is engaging in antisocial behaviour, but that a child may engage in such behaviour, which continues a worrying trend of legislation involving the prediction of bad behaviour. Although the Government's intention is obviously to help all parents to ensure that their children do not engage in bad behaviour in the future, and to help those parents who are not currently copingwhich is a measure that I heartily supportthe proposal may stigmatise children who have done no wrong.
	When I intervened on the Home Secretary, I mentioned that youth offending teams have some experience on which to base such a judgment about a child or parent, but the Bill extends the right to make parenting contracts and apply for parenting orders to registered social landlords. Those issues are difficult for communities and my concern is that the decision should be made by those with the right expertise, which I am not convinced that the RSLs have got.

David Evennett: I am listening to the hon. Lady with great interest. How would she take this matter forward in terms of getting more people involved?

Lynne Featherstone: I will return to that point on another occasion. I am here to argue against the proposals in the Bill.
	The role of RSLs has always concerned housing issues. Although they may well have a role in referring cases that they regard as worrying to an expert, they are not, as far as I am aware, qualified to issue such judgments, which may stigmatise a family or a child, albeit that their intentions were honourable. Will the Minister elaborate on how that might be regulated, or how qualifications or training might be involved, to ensure that anyone given that power to invoke the orderhas the necessary expertise, objectivity and accountability?
	What starts as a parenting order becomes, if breached, a criminal offence. That is worrying. It follows the trend of converting an offence to a criminal offence, presumably with a custodial sentence. The problem with that part of being tough on crime is that, when push comes to shove, the custodial sentence has often seemed out of proportion to the crime. Despite guidelines to magistrates and courts stating that such breaches are not to be regarded as not serious, those carrying out the sentencing appear to disagree. That is particularly evident in relation to antisocial behaviour orders. A third of ASBOs are being breached and sentencing is not following guidelines. The Minister may be aware that I have tabled a parliamentary question to try to establish exactly what is happening with the sentencing that follows breached ASBOs.
	The proposed extension of police powersthe general power to impose conditions on pre-charge bail for all criminal investigations and the power to impose punitive conditions on cautionsamounts to summary justice. Because those powers are applicable to all criminal investigations, there must be a danger that they will be abused. The Bill enables restrictions, fines or summary sentencing to be imposed on an individual. Those powers mean that the police could, at will, decide to act as they have done before where they have been given such discretion. There will be, in their summary justice, a tendency towards disproportionality. The race equality impact assessment says that we do not yet have enough information to judge the impact of this, and that that should be monitored. I hope that we can discuss that in Committee. Several elements of the Bill lay open community issues.
	Part 4, which aims to merge the five criminal justice inspectorates, has been widely discussed. We have no objection to that in principle, but we are worried about the loss of a specialist quality service within the new joint inspectorate. The proposal has provoked apprehension, particularly among the prison and police sectors. We are greatly concerned about the practicalities of such a merger and what reduction in standards, or loss, might come about as a consequence. I ask the Government to think twice about the details of this, particularly in relation to prisons. The inspection of prisons and the discovery of abuses is a truly specialised skill. The prison inspectorate plays a unique role in upholding human rights, and I am worried about losing such an important protection for those who are held in our prisons.
	The current system for detecting abuses and faults has been developed independently by the prison inspectorate from its vast and specialist knowledge. If it were to be incorporated into one general body, I fear not only that its specialised knowledge would be in danger of diminishing, but that there would be less room for it to be truly independent, with the discovery of abuses being jeopardised as a result. Can the Government give a reassurance that the proposed merger will not result in what amounts merely to an audit trail and bean-counting function?
	Credibility is also important. Her Majesty's chief inspector of constabulary has a phenomenal reputation. When he produces a report or makes a statement, the public, but, more important, the police, genuinely listen. A generalist or managing chief inspector will never be able to command such respect, legitimacy or confidence.
	I want to consider a further dangerin the balance between the freedom of individuals to go where they will without fear or favour if they do no harm, and the protection of our citizens against crime and terrorism. There is a problem with the proposal about making passenger flight lists available because it moves from the ability to request information on domestic flight passenger lists in the cause of detecting a crime, to the surveillance of an individual's movements before a crime has been committed. The Government's intention to gather passenger data from domestic journeys means another fundamental shift in the relationship between state and individual. Although the Bill provides for the same powers as those in the Immigration, Nationality and Asylum Act 2006 on international flights, there is a difference when such surveillance is internal.
	It is imperative in the sort of socio-political climate in which we live to avoid a culture of total suspicion of anyone and everyone. We must therefore have the courage to defend civil liberties as the process goes forward. Although I am sure that the motivation behind the proposal is to enable police to see patterns of travel to stop crime and, presumably, to recognise those who might appear suspicious, it marks a shift to crime prediction under the label of crime prevention. It is a difficult line to walk but, with no ground for suspicion and no crime to investigate, there is a worry that there may be nothing to stop the police selecting all routes at all times. There would therefore be nothing to protect individuals from inappropriate surveillance of their movements or to defend their liberty to move around the country. There must therefore be concern about the open-ended permit to watch what we do and safeguards must be put in place to protect individuals against inappropriate surveillance or use of the information about their movements. I hope that, in Committee, we can agree on safeguards.
	In a letter to my hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael), the Home Office stated that clause 9 was
	not designed to allow the routine surveillance of all domestic passengers. The police will only request data on the domestic routes that are of operational interest and likely to provide the greatest amount of intelligence essential to combat terrorism and serious organised crime. They are not designed to keep track of all domestic passengers.
	They will help the police gain effective intelligence on the movement of known terrorist suspects and criminals and will allow them to build up a detailed picture of suspect passengers, travel patterns and networks.
	Although the letter suggests that there is no intention of blanket use of the power, the police officer who attended the meeting to discuss the Bill believed that the purpose was to build up patterns to prevent crime or terrorism. Surely that must be the point of introducing such a power. How far is the step from the contents of the Home Office letterusing the power only when tracking a person of interestto an illegitimate interest in persons, especially those with Muslim-sounding surnames? That is another concern in the context of the race equality impact assessment. Will the power be extended to all flights at all times? The race equality impact study has not found a problem so far. However, we should examine that in Committee because it is an obvious danger, which is inherent in tracking or predicting movement patterns.
	Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows stops without a reasonable ground for suspicion. That was theoretically for a specified area and time but has ended up, for example, for the whole of London all the time. Has the Minister considered establishing an independent body to oversee collecting information on domestic flights? What assurance can be given that information will not be collected on all flights all the time?
	In the letter, we are told that
	requests for information will be recorded and there will be a clear audit trail to safeguard against 'fishing trips'. And that in addition, only police officers of the rank of superintendent or above may authorise a request.
	However, as I said, section 44 started with similar safeguards, but its operation is now permanent across London.
	There is a great range of issues about which we have concerns and I hope that we can work with the Government on them in Committee. I will listen with great interest to the debate and to the Minister's responses to the issues that I have raised.

Madeleine Moon: It would appear that there is much in this Bill that parties on both sides of the House clearly welcome. I welcome the provision for a national policing improvement agency. It will pull together a number of bodies and reduce the opportunities for conflicting advice and guidance.
	Bringing the basic crime units together in line with local authorities will, I am sure, assist those who have not had the benefit of coterminous boundaries such as we have had in Bridgend. F division in Bridgend covers the county borough of Bridgend and the parliamentary constituencies of myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies). That makes sense. It helps joint working, it brings joined-up government, and it should help with communications and partnership working. It also helps with our community safety partnership, which in Bridgend has been incredibly effective and supportive of all the agencies involved, and has pulled together joint working, joint networking and co-ordination of all the services that have helped to reduce crime in my constituency. Indeed, crime across Wales has fallen 5 per cent. over the last year, and the police force in my constituency has been one of the best performing in the United Kingdom.

Stewart Jackson: Is the hon. Lady not a little concerned by the fact that recent experience has shown that coterminous boundaries between basic command units and local authorities sometimes provide an excuse to reduce head counts in the amalgamation?

Madeleine Moon: I cannot comment on head counting, but I can comment on the effect on efficiency. I am more concerned about the efficiency and effectiveness of policing than head counting. I know that the policing in Bridgend has been efficient, effective and successful, and that is what I am looking for. I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman, too, would look for that. It is something to be welcomed.
	When I met members of my community safety partnership, they said that they felt that every antisocial behaviour order granted by the courts was a failure for them. However, they have been successful because they have used the antisocial behaviour legislation and the community safety partnership as a way of working together to ensure that troubled youngsters at risk of coming into the criminal justice system are targeted for resources and for the services that can help them to stay within legal boundaries and improve their behaviour. If the services are targeted at them, they will have access to the support, advice, guidance and mentoring that they need.
	I welcome the extension of the remit of the Independent Police Complaints Commission to the immigration service. That will increase trust and provide a rigorous assessment of complaints about the immigration service.
	I also welcome the standardisation of powers for community support officers and the extension of their powers to cover truancy. That is an obvious and clearly needed extensiona sensible measure that will assist local authority education welfare officers to ensure that as many pupils as possible are in school in school hours, which will reduce the risk of young people being drawn into petty crime, drugs and alcohol abuse.
	The deployment of community support officers in my constituency has been highly effective. Opposition Members who suggest that they have been a failure should come to Bridgend to see how our police force has learned to utilise them effectively. In one of my wards, Wild Mill, community support officers have reduced the incidence of vandalism, antisocial behaviour, and drug and alcohol abuse. Generally, it is now a much safer community in which to live.
	The one negative, if there is one, with community support officers in my constituency is that we tend to lose them, albeit to the professional police force. They see their job as a way of learning the basic skills and gaining the expertise and knowledge that will enable them to be more effective and move into a full-time career in the police. However, that is the only negative that I have found. We will welcome the increase in the number of community support officers in Bridgend.
	I am sure that the Minister is waiting for the word butand it is coming. There are proposals in the Bill about which I must say but; I would not be standing here unless there were. I therefore seek reassurance and some changes. I am worried about the extension of the right of housing departments and registered social landlords to call for parenting contracts and parenting orders. I do not believe that the staff in those agencies have the required skills and expertise, or the necessary background in assessment and evaluation, to make such decisions.
	I shall cite an example from one of my surgeries. A gentleman who came to see me described the problems that he was experiencing with a neighbour in the block of flats that he lived in. The neighbour's behaviour was extremely difficult, and was in many respects a prime example of behaviour calling for a parenting contract. The gentleman described the scratching of cars and the smearing of oil on car windows. He told me about the problems of noise and the deliberate playing of records late at night. He described how his neighbour would knock on his door when he was getting ready for bed late at night: he would hear banging on the door, but when he opened it the neighbour would be gone. All this would appear to be prime territory for a parenting order, but after I had heard more about the perpetrator's background, I realised that this involved a mental health problem, and a parenting order is not the best way of dealing with such problems.
	Staff in agencies that call for parenting orders and parenting contracts need to assess fully the reasons behind the failures leading to the behaviour being experienced. Every alternative means of support and engagement should be employed before a parenting order or contract is called for. Those skills reside within the social services departments, the mental health services and the youth justice teams, and their engagement must be assured before anyone is given the power or the responsibility to call for an order or a contract.
	Building parental competence is a complex process, which organisations such as Sure Start are best placed to provide. As for skills development, the youth justice teams and other organisations in my constituency, such as Youth Works and KPCYthe Kenfig Pyle community youth projectoffer the mentoring, the boundary setting and the skills base that will allow parents and children to understand where their behaviour needs to change and improve.
	I want to speak briefly about the proposal to create a single inspectorate. Before I entered the House, I worked as an inspector with the Care Standards Inspectorate for Wales. I welcome the creation of a single inspectorate; I recognise the value of such a body. I can see the sense in combining five inspectorates into one. There will be savings in information technology, financial administration and human resource functionsbut I must add a but. I seek assurances that the ethos, skills base, culture and expertise required for those who work in the individual inspectorates will not be diluted into some fantasy base whereby a skilled inspector in one field is automatically considered to have transferable skills.
	Some skills are transferable, but inspectors need to remain at the forefront of best practice and of requiring and encouraging change and improvement. They must be ever watchful for abuses, failures and neglect. Full cognisance of legislation and service providers is required to meet the needs of a single inspectorate, and we must ensure that the focused skills of the five inspectorates are not diluted but strengthened by joint working.
	As my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) pointed out, unannounced inspections and the monitoring and reporting of the gaps between agencies are important, but the individual performance of each agency must still be the focus of the inspection.
	I would urge an appropriate start-up period. Time for those five agencies to come together to talk about how they will integrate, co-ordinate and start to work together is critical to the success of the new agency. Not putting that start-up time in place would reduce public confidence in the competence of the new agency, and it must be part of any move to a single inspectorate.
	I give a conditional welcome to the concept of the community call for action. This must be extended to a call not only to the police but to the local authorities, to provide the community facilities, services and agencies that can be critical in ensuring that there is no antisocial behaviour and no low-level crime in communities.
	I cite, for example, the community of Kenfig Hill in my constituency, where the local authorities failed to provide funding for KPCY, which has reached the end of its lottery funding. KPCY provides support for 750 youngsters; it has cut antisocial behaviour, petty crime, vandalism and graffiti, and provides invaluable mentoring and support to young people, as well as to local parents.
	One parent said to me that she could not have coped as a single parent if she had not had the support of KPCY, and had not known that it was somewhere safe to send her children where they could do their homework, get access to computers and play without being targeted by drug users and drug sellers, as well as those who would target youngsters to get into petty crime and petty thieving.
	The local police strongly support the retention of KPCY, knowing that crime will increase exponentially in their area if the organisation goes. The community call for action must enable communities to call on local authorities such as Bridgend county borough council to provide funding for youth facilities such as KPCY and restore funding to youth groups such as the Guides, Scouts and Browniesorganisations not known for attracting youngsters with antisocial tendenciesbut they do not even provide funding for youth facilities at that level.

Mark Pritchard: Does the hon. Lady agree that excellent work is done up and down this land not only by the Scouts, Cubs, Brownies and Guides, but by cadet forces such as the Air Training Corps, the Army Cadet Force and the Sea Cadets, yet the Government fail to put in the adequate funding that those organisations require, despite the fact that the young people involved are a credit to all our communities?

Madeleine Moon: I would endorse virtually everything the hon. Gentleman said, other than his remarks about Government funding. Surely the Government hand out rate support grant to the local authorities and the local authorities decide how it is spent. The Conservative party has always and consistently argued that decisions should be made nearer to the point of service delivery.
	My local authority calls itself a rainbow alliance of Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, but it will not fund leisure services that are critical to ensuring that youngsters realise that we adults value them, want them to engage with society, and want them to enjoy services of a quality that will offer them an alternative to hanging around on street corners, sitting on old ladies' front walls, throwing petrol into the street and setting fire it, and throwing flour bombs and ink bombs. Such low-level bad behaviour makes communities despair. I am glad that the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) also wants my local authority to support funding for youth services in Bridgend.
	I do not want young people to become part of the criminal justice system because of a lack of youth and leisure facilities or adequate children's social services departments. My local authority has been criticised in that regard. As my community safety partnership says, we must recognise that virtually every antisocial behaviour order represents a failure on the part of the statutory services to provide the support network and skills needed to show youngsters an alternative way of behaving.
	I am reaching the end of my buts, but I have a final but in regard to conditional cautions. I feel that they have a key role in presenting offenders with an immediate response to their actionsan immediate recognition of what they have done and what they need to do to make reparation. However, I question whether the policeman on the beat has the necessary skills base on which to construct a rehabilitative conditional caution. Somewhere along the line, we need to incorporate responsibility for a senior police officer and liaison with social services, community safety partnerships and youth justice teams, to establish what conditional cautions should contain.
	The Bill's aim is justice, not punishment. Justice requires that people have alternatives, that there is rehabilitation, and that there are opportunities for those who will come within the purview of the police. I hope that in Committee the minor changes for which Members have called today will be possible. It has been pleasing to observe the common desire to find a constructive and effective solution, and that is what a Committee stage should be for. Apart from my few buts, I support the Bill.

Bernard Jenkin: When the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) welcomed the fact that every speaker so far had generally welcomed the Bill, my heart sank somewhat. I did not interpret those speeches in quite the same way. However, the hon. Lady's long row of buts then emerged, and she presented us with a considered and thoughtful response to many of the Bill's provisions. That applies not least to her description of parenting orders, which bring into question the Government's top-down approach to the respect agenda. She was right to say that judgments about parenting or antisocial behaviour cannot be imposed by formula by an office in Whitehall, although I fear that that is one of the aims of the Bill.
	In one respect, I concur with most of the speeches made so farindeed, all except the Home Secretary's speech. The Bill appears to be a very centralising measure. The Home Secretary tut-tutted at my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), suggesting that his facts were wrong, but we need only open the Bill to see that it gives the Secretary of State additional powers. How can a Bill that gives a Secretary of State additional powers be described as anything other than a centralising measure? Indeed, the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), who is not in his place at the moment, expressed concern on behalf of the Select Committee on Home Affairs at the idea that this is a centralising measure.
	I draw the House's attention to one particular provision. Set out in schedule 2 is new section 40 of the Police Act 1996, which replaces with a very wide power the pretext for intervention in the 1996 Act, as amended by the Police Reform Act 2002. At the moment, any intervention by the Secretary of State in the running of a constabulary depends on a trigger from an inspectorate. There has to be a manifest failing in the performance of a constabulary before there can be an intervention. That is itself a stronger power than this Government inheritedand now it is to be replaced by the following, under the heading Power to give directions in relation to police force:
	(1) Where the Secretary of State is satisfied that the whole or any part of a police force is failing to discharge any of its functions in an effective manner, whether generally or in particular respects, he may direct
	(a) the chief officer of police of the force,
	(b) the police authority responsible for maintaining the force, or
	(c) both of them.
	That is a far more general power to direct police forces than has ever existed in national legislation before. I therefore commend the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), as well as many of the points made by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), about the centralising tendencies of the Bill. This is a further twist to the ratchet of centralisation of police forces. Therefore, I hope that my hon. Friends responsible for the policy of Her Majesty's official Opposition on the Bill will hold open the prospect of our voting against it on Third Reading, in protest at its centralising aspects.
	It was utterly ridiculous for the Home Secretary to mutter that amalgamation and police force structures were irrelevant to the Bill. I am always wary of instructing the occupant of the Chair to rule things outof orderthe hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) came a cropper, rightly, after raising a point of order. The amalgamation of constabularies is the most graphic feature of current Government centralisation policy.
	The Government have yet to put up a serious concrete argument in favour of these force amalgamations. They have yet to justify the 500 million cost, the disruption to the operation of police forces, and the inevitable effect on police morale and performance as mergers take place. Inevitably, our police forces will become increasingly remote if their command structures are moved up to regional level, destroying historic local loyalties. The Government have yet to explain why bigger forceswhich they call strategic forceshave any merit, except in the eyes of those sitting in offices in Whitehall, who will have fewer heads to order around, fewer units to manage and an easier job, at the expense of local policing. The Home Secretary continues to recite his mantra at every opportunity, although the actual effects of the policies that he is carrying out are in direct conflict with it.
	How can the Home Secretary keep talking about the development of neighbourhood policing when, in Essex, for example, he is taking away the figurehead and symbol of law and order in Essex which, personified in one man, gives credibility and authority to everything that the Essex police dothe chief constable of Essex? If the Home Secretary abolishes the chief constable, to whom will Essex police belong? At the moment they are our police; they belong to the people of Essex. Under the Home Secretary's proposals, they will belong to some vague, remote and anonymous region or sub-region. This is an utterly destructive development, which certainly does not command the support of the people of Essex.
	This Bill represents the disease of which the process of amalgamation is but one symptom. It is when the problems get too difficult that they seem to be easier to address by moving the deckchairs around on the Titanic, rather than by dealing with the water coming into the ship's hull. Indeed, under this Government, given the bureaucracy that has been piled on to our public services, there are now so many deckchairs stacked on the Titanic and being moved around that it is a wonder that this great ship ever floated in the first place.
	The disease affects not just policing but local government. The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) said that local authorities had the freedom to spend their money as they saw fit, but let us be realistic. Every local authority in the land is struggling to make ends meet just to satisfy the statutory responsibilities that central Government have given it, yet central Government pile on more and more statutory responsibilities and impose yet more restrictions on local government's freedom to spend their money as they think fit.
	The same disease is also affecting the health service. What are the problems in the health service? The Government have decided that they

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has illustrated his point; perhaps he will now confine his remarks to the Bill before us.

Bernard Jenkin: I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker; I am perhaps getting carried away with my theme. But having one, two, five or 13 primary care trusts does not demonstrate the fitness of a Government to tackle the real problems in the health service, and the same point applies to the police service.
	What about regional government? My hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) made a very apposite point. It is all very well for the Liberal Democrats to talk about localism and their local credentials, but they support the principle of regional government, or at least they did when

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman to relate his comments to the Bill that we are discussing.

Bernard Jenkin: If I may say so, Madam Deputy Speaker, the police force amalgamations, in which this Bill plays a part, seem to feed directly into the regional agenda, which should have been ditched following rejection of it in the north-east referendum just 18 months ago. This Bill is part of the top-down, Whitehall micro-management disease. I wish that the Government could see that proposals that they believe will improve police forces' local responsiveness will in fact do exactly the opposite.
	I have to tell the Ministerand the Home Secretary, who I hope will receive a report of this debatethat discussion is taking place in Essex about whether police force restructuring should take place without a referendum. A number of my parliamentary colleagues are holding such talks with Essex county council, which has the power to call a referendum on the issue. That is the way the discussion is going. With my experience of facilitating the North-east says No campaign, I have no doubt that we would win any referendum on the survival of the Essex police by eight or more to one.
	The centralising tendencies of Whitehall Governments extend further back than 1997. They reach further back than even the second world war. They reach right back to the first world war and beyond it, to the first social measures that were taken towards the end of the 19th century. However, there must come a point at which centralisation stops. Were there to be a referendum on the future of the Essex police, it would represent the beginning of a great political movement in this country to restore real local autonomy, and devolution of power and authority to the organs of local governmentnot least to the county of Essex, representing the shire government that even William the Conqueror inherited, from Alfred the Great.

Boris Johnson: Of course I wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) on his sterling defence of the Essex police force. However, I wish to draw attention to an opportunity that the Bill gives us to rectify a matter of serious and widespread public concern, which has already been addressed by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone) and my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert). That matter is the extradition arrangements that we have with the United States, and what we may expect from America and what they may demand from us.
	I do not wish to indulge in an anti-American polemic, but I wish to suggest a speedy way in which the problem could be rectified in a way that would reassure the Americans that those suspected of serious criminal offences will be speedily yielded up to themin a way that they would expect from their most important international friend and allywhile at the same time protecting the rights of UK nationals. I am grateful to right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House who have signed my early-day motion on the subject.
	I hope that the Government will agree that the neatest solution would be to insert a line into the Billalong with the many other amendments to the Extradition Act 2003to incorporate article 7 of the European convention on extradition, so that any country may refuse extradition if the offence may be deemed to have been committed in whole or in part on its territory. I shall explain why I believe that change to be essential.
	There are currently several cases before the courts that arise directly from the Extradition Act 2003. I know of one of those cases particularly, because it affects one of my constituents, who is one of three bankers who are being electromagnetically suckedhoovered, evenacross the Atlantic without any duty on the Americans to produce any prima facie evidence.
	I have no direct evidence of whether the Americans are right or wrong to say that my constituent has committed the offences, but everybodyincluding the American authoritiesagrees on one point. Insofar as there were any offences, in this case and all other analogous cases, they were committed by UK nationals, in this country and against UK interests. If there was a crime, it was a British crime. We may ask, therefore, why we are exporting our nationals to the US so willingly, when the natural forum for trial is obviously this country and when it is inconceivable that we would willingly export our nationals to any other part 2 countryany other country in category 2.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman of the rules of sub judice relating to individual cases currently before the courts. Reference to sub judice in the legislation is acceptable, but detail on individual cases should be avoided.

Boris Johnson: I am indebted to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I do not think that anything that I have said, or am likely to say, could in any way prejudice the outcome of any trial, but I am grateful for your reminder.
	Why is it inconceivable that any other country could be treated in that way? It is because America, rightly or wrongly, takes a wide view of her jurisdiction and awards herself a great deal of latitude in deciding who to demand and how to treat them when they arrive in America. The Prime Minister himself has said that Guantanamo Bay is an anomaly. There are people on both sides of the House who would use stronger language. It is in that context that people in this country need reassurance about our arrangements. What I am proposing, what I hope my Front-Bench colleagues are about to propose and what my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) has already suggested would provide that reassurance. We have set out to bring our extradition arrangements with America into alignment with those of every other European country.
	The Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety does not seem to be attending with the interest that one would hope, but it might be of interest to her to know that in virtually every other European country there is no tradition of extraditing nationals. We do it, and the Irish do it, but they have incorporated article 7 of the European convention on extradition into their extradition law in exactly the way that I have suggested so that if one of their nationals has committed a crime in whole or in part in Ireland, there is no question of extradition.

Mark Francois: I am mindful of the guidance that Madam Deputy Speaker has given the House with regard to sub judice and I shall attempt to abide by it. Does my hon. Friend agree with me that when that powerful treaty was put through the House, we accepted it on the basis that it was necessary to fight the war against terror, on which we have stood shoulder to shoulder with our American counterparts? However, practical experience has shown that the US Administration have begun to use the treaty for other measures. For instance, the Internal Revenue Service has attempted to use the arrangement in order to extradite people to the US to face charges relating to white-collar crime. Does my hon. Friend accept that while the protection of revenue is important, such extraditions are against the spirit of the agreement and there should at least be equivalence on both sides, rather than allowing this anomaly to continue?

Boris Johnson: My hon. Friend is exactly on the point. It would not only be reassuring to people in this country if we were to restore that symmetry, it would also be reassuring to the Americans because they do not want to keep hearing anti-American claptrap. It would take away a stick that anti-Americansperhaps there are some on the Labour Benchesmight use to beat them.
	There is a second and related problem that greatly inflames the whole question. We are obliged by the terms of the Extradition Act 2003 to send our nationals to America without prima facie evidence, yet America is under no corresponding duty to send people we want from America without prima facie evidence being supplied by us. I will not breach your guidelines on sub judice, Madam Deputy Speaker, but let us suppose that a group of New York bankers was accused of having used an e-mail account in the UK to defraud a New York bank. It is highly unlikely that the authorities in this country would seek their extradition to Britain, but even if they did so, the American authorities would insist that the UK showed due cause. However, we place no such parallel and symmetrical obligation on them. That is a grotesque imbalance.
	Why does that grotesque imbalance exist? The Prime Minister said in Prime Minister's questions on Wednesday that it is because the American Congress has not ratified the 2003 treaty. That is not, strictly speaking, true. It is right to say that Congress does not want to ratify the 2003 treaty because many Congressmen want to keep the ability to retain in America people whom they fear would not get a fair trial overseas and they want to keep a political bar to extradition. That is why we have not succeeded in extraditing a single IRA suspect from America to this country in 30 years. However, even if Congress were to ratify this treaty, it is a dismal fact thatI am sorry if I am speaking loudly, but I thought that the Minister was not listening and I am delighted to see that she is; I thank her for paying attention because what I am saying is very importantthere would be no symmetry because we have to show due cause and they do not. Therefore, I think the whole treaty should be renegotiated. It is a mistake, it was done in great haste and it should be renegotiated.
	In the interim, I have a proposal that I hope the Minister can accept. We could clear up the anomaly, rectify the injustice and remove the asymmetry if we inserted a single line into the Bill to say that in designating a part 2 territory the Home Secretary should do nothing inconsistent with the terms of an extant treaty. That would be a neat and useful method because the Americans have not ratified the 2003 treaty, therefore the 1972 arrangements are still in effect and they provide an element of reciprocity in our arrangements. Under the 1972 treaty, both sides have to show prima facie evidence. Therefore, if we inserted such a line into the Bill the asymmetry would be removed, America and the UK would be on the same footing and we would be obliged to show in court why we wanted so-and-so to be extradited to face trial in our territory, and they would have to show why America was the place to have the trial and not the UK. In the interim, it would also supply the Americans with a powerful incentive to get on with ratifying the 2003 treaty.
	I know that a great many people in the House share my concerns. I hope that the Ministerunlike the Home Secretary, who has been really rather rude in his treatment of this matterwill accept that there is merit and justice in this case and that a great many people on both sides of the House care about it very deeply. It would mean that a good deal of public disquiet about our extradition arrangements would be alleviated and that we in this country would no longer give the impression of being obedient little lapdogs. It would mean the removal of a weapon from the arsenal of anti-American prejudice and we in the House would be fulfilling our most vital function, which is to protect the rights of our citizens, UK nationals, in the way that every other country in Europe protects the rights of its nationals.

Bernard Jenkin: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I understand that some hon. Members might have to suck or chew something unobtrusively if they have a sore throat, but I find it somewhat paradoxical in a debate about the respect agenda that a Government Member should be very visibly chewing gum. Is it in order for an hon. MemberI shall not embarrass him by naming himto chew gum obtrusively in the Chamber?

Madam Deputy Speaker: I do not think that that is a point of order for the Chair. I hope that all hon. Members will be polite in their behaviour when present in the Chamber.

Stephen Pound: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Are you aware that some hon. Members may be suffering
	the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
	in that they are trying to give up smoking tobacco and may be masticating medicinally on occasion and should therefore possibly be forgiven?

Madam Deputy Speaker: I thank the hon. Gentleman. That thought crossed my mind, but I thought that it was better not say it in case that was not so. I hope that the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) is satisfied with that explanation.

David Evennett: Let us get back to the Bill.
	I should like to make a brief contribution, and I am pleased to be able to participate in what has been a very important debate today. Of course, the Bill's aims of building safer, stronger communities and instilling a culture of respect are highly commendable and would be welcomed by all hon. Members. Whether legislation can ever achieve such aims remains an open question.
	I commend the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who gave a powerful presentation of the case against some aspects of the Bill and highlighted some of our concerns. We all agree that the Bill has some good points, but Conservative Members have great concern about the centralising influences that the Government seem to show in all their measures, and the Bill is no exception.
	Yes, real issues to do with antisocial behaviour and police restructuring have come across in the debate today, but some of us are rather concerned that the Home Secretary did not answer the point that was made in interventions on him that the real reason for the Bill is perhaps police authority restructuring. That is behind the Bill, which is being wrapped up under the guise of an antisocial behaviour measure, when something a little more sinister is, in fact, behind it. Phrases such as technical, bureaucratic and too much central control seem to be the hallmarks of large parts of the Bill.
	In my constituency, however, the most important issues are those associated with the antisocial behaviour that our constituents face every day of their lives, and I want to centre my limited contribution in today's debate on those issues. In particular, police community support officers have been mentioned in general, but I want to highlight how important they have been in improving community safety in my constituency.
	I was one of the sceptics when the proposal for CSOs first came into being. I was sceptical because I wondered how they could do the job and what contribution they could make to improve antisocial behaviour and reduce criminal activity in our borough. I was sceptical, too, about their training and about their roletheir powers and their responsibilitiesbut I welcome what CSOs have achieved so far and what will happen under the Bill to standardise their powers and responsibilities. I still have some doubts about their training and wonder whether it could be better and more extensive, but I am sure that that will be debated at length in Committee.
	It is true to say that when we go around any Conservative Member's constituency we see that the police are very much respected and their work is much appreciated. However, the tide of antisocial behaviour, vandalism and graffiti that has occurred during the past decade is still growing worse and worsein fact, it has become an epidemic in some areasand residents, shopkeepers, business people and visitors are all appalled by the situation in which we find ourselves in a society where people do not have a great deal of respect for one another. Of course, that is the reason why we are debating the Bill.
	I met some of the residents of the Hurst Place estate in the northern part of my constituency. They came to see me because they felt that the vandalism, graffiti and bad behaviour of the youths in our society was out of control. That is the key issue that most people find: they are worried about where things are going and how they will end up. Anything that can be done to improve those aspects of antisocial behaviour will be welcomed. Part 3 is welcome, because local authorities will have a new role with oversight committees to scrutinise crime and disorder reduction partnerships, which is very positive.
	As always, the worry with this Government is the vagueness of the call for community action. They use wonderful phrases in their approach, but what does it actually mean in reality? Of course, the Government say that they will allow communities to request action on the community safety issues that they consider the police or other organisations and crime reduction partners have failed to address adequately, but I am not sure what that means in reality. What does it mean for the people who are already suffering? In Committee, we look forward to taxing out more from the Government.

Stephen Pound: Taxing?

David Evennett: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is not happy with the word taxing, but we do not get any meat from the Government; we get a bit of waffle in many ways.
	The third issue is the extension of the range of agencies that can enter into parenting contracts and apply for parenting orders. I intervened on the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone) when she was being very negative about that proposal. She was concerned about training and the organisations that might be included, but I welcome that measure. If we really want to get to grips with the problems, we must be positive. The Liberal Democrats were not positive, but I welcome what the Government are endeavouring to do in that respect. However, the restructuring of other organisations is very technical, and many hon. Members are not happy with those parts of the Bill. We should concentrate on the real issues that affect individuals.
	I was interested to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson), who made a very powerful contribution and highlighted the other issue that I was going to raise in my contribution, but as he said it in such a powerful and interesting way, I will not continue with it, other than to say that he makes a valid point about which Conservative Members are very concerned. I know that the Minister has been listening avidly not only to what I have said, but what he said on the matter, and I am sure that she will take on board the issue, so that we can have some action on it.
	There is much to welcome in the Bill, but there are other areas where we feel that there is another agenda, which is to do with police restructuring and taking the decisions higher up and away from the local community. Conservative Members believe that localism is important and that people should feel an affinity with their local police force and with the people who enforce the law in their localities. In many ways, aspects of the Bill give more and more power to the Home Secretary and assign things to larger organisations. That will not deal with the problems or allow organisations to feel ownership of the solution for dealing with antisocial behaviour in their localities.
	There is much that is good in the Bill, but we are concerned about aspects that take things in the opposite direction to the way in which we believe that they should be going, which is to make sure that local communities have ownership of local problems and the solutions, too. As the Bill proceeds, we will push hard on the two or three points that I have highlighted.

Sharon Hodgson: I welcome the Bill wholeheartedly. It contains numerous measures across a wide range of areas that will improve our police forces and the quality of life in all our constituencies in many ways. I am pleased that that is recognised on both sides of the House and that the Opposition have said that they will not divide the House on Second Reading.
	I welcome the strengthening of the powers and role of community support officers in part 1. The Bill standardises CSO powers so that CSOs can contribute fully to neighbourhood policing and deal with more issues on the spot. I also welcome giving police CSOs the power to deal with truants. They are well placed to deal with them because they are on duty in the community and can obviously spot truants, especially the regular ones. That starts to give one the image of a Britain of yesteryear, when the local bobby would be on the beat and spot little Johnny or Betty and know them by name and where they live, and would then escort them home to surprised and often cross parents. That was a time when communities worked together for all their inhabitants and when the police and all other public servants were accorded much respectI am sure that the House would agree that they deserved it, as they do today.
	I also welcome the strengthening of powers to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour and especially the extension of the number of agencies that can enter into parenting contracts and apply for parenting orders. That brings me on to part 2, Powers of police. With regard to the new extension of powers for the police to stop and search people at airports, I want to draw the House's attention to the practical difficulties of enforcing football banning orders. The other point that I want to raise relates more specifically to persons entering or leaving the country, who are under no obligation to account for their identity to the police if requested to do so. I am keen to move quickly on the issue because of the 2006 World cup, which is being hosted by Germany, and the likelihood of officers being required to perform port operations to screen football fans without the legislative backing to do so.
	While researching the matter, I have spoken to numerous representatives from the police, including Michael Downes, who is a national representative on the Police Federation. He has conducted numerous pieces of research and has spoken to experts in policing football disorder and members of the police who conduct port operations during international fixtures.
	I will give the House some background to the operation of football banning orders. Letters are sent to persons subject to the orders prior to or at the commencement of the control period, which is usually five days before the event or fixture. The letters direct those persons to comply with the order, which could involve surrendering a passport or signing in at a police station. There is no national policy or approach to ensure that the orders are complied with. Research suggests that it is unlikely that they are, or that breaches are detected. That is often because the matter is simply not a priority in all forces and little or no training is given to front-counter staff in this area of legislation.
	In addition, there is no requirement to inform the authorities of a change of residence, and although the Violent Crime Reduction Bill tries to deal with that, it does not appear to cater for persons working away from home. That is a major problem for police officers, who are often not told that X or Y is working away for a week or so, thus making it impossible to police the order.
	Persons are also entitled to apply for duplicate passports if they claim that the original has been lost or stolen. They can also be issued with a duplicate passport if they claim that they are waiting for a visa application to be processed. In addition, if travelling in the EU, there is no requirement to possess a passport. A driving licence can be accepted as sufficient identification to travel. That is not a major problem at present because most airline operators have a company policy that requires a passport to be produced on departure. It should be noted, however, that car ferry companies often record only the lead name plus the number of passengers. It is likely that a large number of the fans who attend the 2006 World cup in Germany will travel by car and ferry. Approximately 48 ferries leave Dover a day, each with a capacity of 2,000 passengers. Dover is, of course, only one major shipping port. Others such as Hull will also play a major role during the event.
	Entries are made on the police national computer showing details of football banning orders. However, because of technical difficulties, people are shown as wanted/missing. That is also the case for sex offenders and persons subject to antisocial behaviour orders. That causes two major problems. First, people are being detained unlawfully because they are shown as wanted, and, secondly, port operations are not as efficient or effective as they could be.
	Police officers have no power to request the production of any form of identification from persons entering or leaving the UK. If a police officer saw a person leaving the country and wanted to establish their identityfor example, to find out whether they were wanted on a warrant or for an arrestable offence, subject to a football banning order, or recorded on the sex offenders registerthey could not do so. In addition, at the momentthis matter is included in the Billpolice officers have no authority to examine rail, shipping or flight manifests. That is why I welcome the extension of powers in the Bill.
	British Transport police play a key role in port operations as a result of Eurotunnel and subsequent rail links into France and onwards. Legislators often use words such as port or police officer, but they cause British Transport police officers some difficulty. All Eurotunnel journeys commence at railway stations, not ports, which is where the difficulty arises. It would also be more useful if the term constable was used as an alternative to police officer, as I note that it is in the Bill.
	The points that I have mentioned cause police officers considerable difficulties in performing their duties efficiently and effectively. I hope that the majority of the issues will be addressed in Committee.
	I welcome many other aspects of the Bill. I not only welcome the powers on stop and search, but ask for them to go further. Part 3, which I will not speak about in detail, covers the measures in our respect agenda to deal with antisocial behaviour and improve the parenting of young people. Those measures should be welcomed by the whole House, as they are. I look forward to following the Bill's progress in Committee.

Mark Pritchard: The Bill is revealing in what it does not include, rather than in what it does. It does not provide an opportunity for hon. Members to debate the most important change to policing in this country for more than 70 years: the amalgamation of police forces. There is great concern in my constituency that West Mercia police, despite being one of the best-performing forces in the country, will be banished to a super-force that will include Birmingham, which bears no relation to the rural policing needs of Shropshire.
	I accept that the West Mercia force is not perfect. Constituents write to me and telephone me to say that they would like police officers to respond more quickly, and rightly so. There are issues arising from neighbourhood policing. There is a wish to see more police officers on the beat. These shortcomings are predominantly the fault of the Government, who have created more paperwork for police officers and have caused officers to spend more time in police stations rather than on patrol, where people like to see them.
	In market towns such as Shifnal, Albrighton, Wellington and Newport in my constituency, constituents want to see police officers on the beat. The Government's amalgamation plans will mean that there will be fewer police officers on the streets of rural Shropshire, and more police from Shropshire on the urban streets of places such as Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent. Once again, the relevant legislation will be passed under secondary legislationby order of the Secretary of State rather than by the will of the House, which is the will of the people.
	Is it not perverse that today we can discuss extending the powers of community support officers to pick up truantswe support such measuresyet cannot discuss, as representatives of the people who put us here, the issues that concern us most? Such issues include the amalgamation of well-performing police forces such as West Mercia. It is a perverse use of parliamentary time. It is another affront to the House, showing that the Government care more about issuing press releases than about bringing matters before the House for proper and full debate that is both transparent and accountable to the people.
	The Bill sets out the importance of community and neighbourhood policingan issue on which the Minister should respond. We are concerned that police authorities will be less accountable, especially if we have strategic police authorities. I am aware that there will be a transitional period of two years, after which the Government might consider policing panels. Where are policing panels in the Bill? They are not mentioned. We are supposed to take it on trust that the Secretary of State will introduce policing panels in future. I will be grateful for the Minister's comments on that.
	Part of the rationale of strategic police forces is to deal with the gap in so-called level 2 policing. Can we not deal with that through the already established taskforce? Could we not consider appointing more senior police officers within existing police forces who have experience of anti-terrorism operations?
	I am aware that the West Mercia police force is recruiting a senior officer, and I hope that the Government will not intervene. The recruitment will allow the police authority to appoint an officer with, I hope, anti-terrorism experience, to fulfil some of the objectives that the Government have set in their plans.
	I would be quite relaxed about the regionalisation of special branch. There is certainly an argument for better co-ordination of special branch officers in the region. However, we do not have to regionalise the whole of west midlands policing to deliver that end. The Serious Organised Crime Agency will fulfil many of the objectives that the Government have said they are trying to achieve through the regionalisation of police forces. It seems that the Government are fulfilling a regional agenda at any attempt while ignoring the will of the people. I call on the Minister to give an undertaking that if the people of West Mercia, through their local authorities, should ask the Government for a referendum, they will be allowed to decide whether they wish to retain the existing West Mercia force.
	Are the Government not aware of the importance of morale? There are hard-working police officers and community support officers who do not want to be part of a regional super-force. Morale at present is very low as a result of the Government's proposals. It was Sir Ian Blair who askedI do not often quote the Metropolitan Police Commissionerduring the Dimbleby lecture what was the purpose of the police. The Secretary of State has tried to answer that question today, perhaps for the first time after many months of lobbying. We need to ask also what local people believe that the police are for. What do they want the police to do? The overriding answer that I hear is that they want more local policing on the streets. They want more community policing. The measures set out in the Bill will not deliver that. On the face of it, there is much talk about it, but I doubt whether it will deliver it. That is why people are concerned.

Mark Francois: I am enjoying my hon. Friend's speech. If I may say so, he is making a powerful case. As for the level 2 tasks, I understand that the Government have rejected the so-called federation approach of getting a number of different constabularies in a region to work together to combat terrorism. I thought that that had some merit. Is there not the alternative of their working with elements of the Serious Organised Crime Agency to provide a link between constabularies and thereby fight terrorism in the regions? That might be a good way to address the problem, and a number of chief constables, including my own, have said that they think that that is quite a good idea.

Mark Pritchard: My hon. Friend makes two excellent pointsnamely, the issues of SOCA and federation. As I mentioned last week in the House, the Government are always lecturing Opposition Members to listen to professionals. Why do not the Government listen to professionals? Why not listen to the West Mercia chief constable, Paul West? Why not listen to the police authority? It wants the Government to leave it alone and allow it to get on with its job. The point about regional co-operation without having to go into all of the major changes that the Government are proposing is one that has been made well. I hope that the Minister will respond to that.
	It was Sir Ian Blair who said that national security depends on neighbourhood security. We so often hear about the lack of human intelligence. Often, low-level crime leads the police to an awareness of higher-level crime. If we see a reduction of police contact on the street with local people, I think that the Government's aims of defeating terrorism and serious crime will be undermined through lack of human intelligence and a lack of communication with local police constables.
	There are numerous cases throughout the land where the local bobby on the beat has uncovered a major crime, including an attempt at a major terrorist incident. It is not always the regional taskforce or the intelligence agencies that do that. Often successes are due to the hard work, diligence and care of local constables on the beat. They cannot be looking for serious crime in Shropshire if they are being asked to attend football events in Birmingham.
	I ask the Minister to consider the proposals of my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron). He set out an alternative approach that is based on the key principles of sharing responsibility and trusting people. He proposes that
	Central control of the police would be replaced with direct local accountability through elected commissioners or police authorities, rebuilding the link between forces and their communities.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I need to offer the hon. Gentleman a cautionary word. There are ways in which, by reference to the contents of the Bill, one can refer to the organisation of the police force, but one cannot major on it, as the hon. Gentleman acknowledged at the outset of his speech. Therefore, he should not major on it.

Mark Pritchard: I am grateful for your wise counsel, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as I was concluding on the first part of my speech, which focuses only on the regionalisation of police forces. I will conclude with three or four more sentences on the point so as not to distract my thoughts. That will mean that I will not need to include in my final remarks the substantive remarks in my introductory comments.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is defying my advice very elegantly, but I recommend that he should not do so.

Mark Pritchard: That is a sound recommendation, which I am happy to accept, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	May I turn to clause 15, which deals with the role of local authorities? The Government claim that local authorities will have more responsibility as a result of the extended role of community partnerships, so will the Minister give due consideration, as the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) suggested, to the role of youth services? If local authorities are asked to do more and if they are to be made more accountable, particularly for crime reduction, I hope that the Home Office will urge the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to provide adequate funding from existing resources for youth services. Time and again, my constituents say that young people are not all involved in antisocial activityit would clearly be wrong to suggest that they arebut a small minority are often involved in such activity because they are bored. I therefore hope that local authorities will be encouraged to provide more youth services.
	The Government have encouraged the setting-up of one-stop shops, enabling young people to attend a youth centre where they can receive drugs counselling and advice on schooling. Those one-stop shops are not always accessible to everyone in a given geographical area. Labour-led Telford and Wrekin borough council has suggested that a super-youth centre should be established in Stafford park, which is miles from many of the young people in my constituency. They cannot reach it on public transport but, even if they wanted to do so, why cannot they have a youth centre within three or four miles of their home, not seven, eight or even 10 miles away? I therefore hope that the key role of youth services in the Bill will be expanded in Committee.
	Clause 12 deals with conditional cautions, but I am concerned that it will bypass the courts and allow prosecutors to levy lenient fines and light community sentences. My constituents and, indeed, the constituents of many hon. Members will be alarmed by the detail of the Bill and its implications for individuals who commit serious crimes such as actual bodily harm, affray, criminal damage and the possession of class A drugs such as cocaine and heroin. The Bill provides a soft option for those offenders, with a maximum penalty of 500 or 20 hours of community work. Communities in my constituency are blighted by criminal damage and affray, yet the Government have sent out a signal in the Bill that people are likely to receive only 20 hours of community work or a fine of 500, which may never be paid.
	Clause 9 deals with the duty of ship and aircraft owners to provide passenger and crew information. I support the measure, but the Government are in danger of putting resources and energy into gathering data rather than gathering smart data, which is more likely to be of value to our intelligence agencies and police forces. If they genuinely wish to make provision for port security, what are they are doing to monitor and assess threats from cargo ships? Despite all the rhetoric and talk about homeland security they have still not created a post of homeland security Minister. It is time that they made their intentions clear. I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) is not in the Chamber, but I suspect that he would be in the running for such a job. I hope that that does not offend the MinisterI believe that she, too, would be in the running, and I wish her well in that endeavour. It is time that the Government appointed a homeland security Minister and sent out a clear signal to people who would harm this country and undermine our national security that they take terrorism and national security seriously. I pay tribute to the excellent work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) who, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer), has been tireless in reminding the Government of the issue. I hope that when the Government eventually declare that they have set up a department of homeland security or created a new ministerial post in the Home Office they will give credit where it is due and acknowledge my colleagues' role.
	Clauses 33 to 35 deal with cyber crimea subject that has already been raised today. I refer Members to my interest in the Register of Members' Interests, and I wish to declare that I am parliamentary vice-chairman of the Conservative technology forum. Its annual general meeting is under way as I speak, so I shall be late.

Stephen Pound: We need not detain the hon. Gentleman.

Mark Pritchard: I am grateful to hon. Gentleman, whose interventions are timely but not always relevant.
	I welcome the proposals to increase the penalties for cyber crime, but I am concerned that in the very week in which we are discussing the Bill the Government are considering sharing intelligence data with other so-called competent law enforcement agencies in Europe. Under questioning, al-Qaeda suspects have admitted that cyber crime and cyber terrorism were one of their key objectives. They have admitted trying to infiltrate critical British infrastructures for the intelligence agencies and, allegedly, our nuclear and energy infrastructures. I am concerned that the Government have allowed a great deal of information to be shared with third parties that may not have the same security that we have in the United Kingdom. I do not believe that UK security is sufficient, and I hope that the Government will do all that they can to support the excellent work of experts on cyber crime and terrorism in the Cabinet Office.
	In conclusion, I wish to put on record my thanks for the hard work and dedication of police officers and community support officers throughout the West Mercia police force, particularly the officers who serve the Wrekin parliamentary constituency. For many years, I have supported the work of the police. I am a late convert, I admit, to the role of CSOs, but I am concerned that the extension of their powers will lead to their being less visible if they spend more time in police stations doing paperwork. I am concerned, too, that CSOs will receive the same level of training, but will be asked to do more. We need to ensure that they receive increased training. I share the concerns of some of my constituents that CSOs do not have the power of arrest and do not carry a police warrant card. I am extremely worried that the extension of powers will leave them in a position where they have not received the relevant training, they do not carry a warrant card and they do not have respect. As a result, they may well come into harm's way. Is it not the case that police officers, along with many Conservative Members, support CSOs when they are working in co-operation and collaboration with police officers on the beat? That is where they are most effective. Those, in paraphrase, are the words of the Police Federation.
	The Bill is another example of the Government talking localism while centralising more powers. Allowing policing in Shropshire to be run by the Home Secretary from his desk in Whitehall will not work and is a recipe for disaster. It is a travesty to allow Parliament to debate extending CSO powers with respect to truants, but not to allow us a comprehensive debate and a Division on the amalgamation of excellent police forces such as West Mercia.

James Brokenshire: The Bill offers the House the opportunity of a wide-ranging debate on policing. I noted that the Home Secretary emphasised that in his initial comments, when he said that the Bill would have an impact at every level of policing. I share his aspiration of creating safer communities, although I may approach the topic from a different perspective.
	It has been interesting to hear Members' comments during the debate. There is clearly a strong feeling that the intent behind certain aspects of the Bill is to implement the regionalisation agenda. My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) spoke about his support of his local police force. My hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) dealt with the situation in Essex and whether that county will push for a referendum on the implementation of any changes to the Essex police force. As a Member whose constituency borders Essexmany of my constituents would probably like to be in EssexI find that an interesting proposal. I and other hon. Members will follow developments in Essex with great interest.
	I shall focus my remarks on three issues arising from the Bill. First, there is the direction of travel and the prospect of centralisation. Although local control may be emphasised, it will not necessarily be implemented through the provisions. Secondly, there is the impact of the creation of the new chief inspector for justice, community safety and custody. Thirdly, there are the missed opportunities in relation to extradition.
	The Bill allows us to debate the role and function of the police. I begin with some comments from Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, in his recent Dimbleby lecture, when he said:
	We don't want one kind of police force being nice to people and another one arriving in darkened vans wearing the balaclavas. Whoever is responsible for the one has to be responsible for the other.
	That provokes an interesting theoretical debate about the control of the police and where that direction comes from. Some of the emphasis in the Bill seems to take a dual approach, rather than the single approach for which the Metropolitan Police Commissioner called. Centralised control takes the form of the right of intervention by the Home Secretary in the operation of the police, whereas local control is much less defined or thought out and lacks teeth.
	On the powers of intervention, the explanatory notes to the Bill contain the soothing comment that those would be used only as a last resort. I am not wholly convinced by those words. The approach outlined in the Bill will strengthen the internal culture of direction from the centre, with more limited input and direction from the local bodies intended to reflect the differing needs and aspirations of communities. The Home Secretary was tut-tutting from the Front Bench and the Minister is shaking her head, but when we analyse the Bill in Committee, we will see what the direction of travel is and what protection is afforded to local communities. The Bill appears to give the Home Secretary greater control and greater power.
	Sir Chris Fox, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said:
	These measures may lead to more centralised direction at a time when forces are trying to give a local response to local problems.
	The Bill could have strengthened local police authorities by giving them, rather than the Home Secretary, the power to set strategic objectives and to be more relevant to the public by greater accountability, perhaps through election. What we have is very different. Schedule 2 reserves specific powers to the Secretary of State to play a greater role in the composition of individual police authorities and to determine strategic priorities for police in police authority areas. From my reading of the schedule, there is nothing to suggest that different priorities can be set for different police authorities, rather than a straightforward structural approach setting out parameters for all police authorities. The Minister may be able to offer some clarification in her winding-up speech.
	There are significant powers to give directions to chief police officers and to police authorities in much wider circumstances than previously. Although there is a requirement for the Home Secretary to allow an opportunity for police officers and police authorities to make alternative proposals, it seems to be entirely at the discretion of the Home Secretary to ignore those, without even offering the chance for such measures to be implemented to see how they work out.
	I appreciate that the Home Secretary may wish to intervene rapidly in a failing authority, but that circumstance would have been apparent for some time. The swingeing powers that the Home Secretary has reserved to himself to intervene, without the police authority or the chief police officer having an opportunity to offer an alternative proposal, seem to be extremely strong. No doubt we will hear more soothing words this evening about the implementation of that power and how it would be used, but it does not give much protection and allows the Home Office to intervene more readily than in the past. The comments of the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr.   Denham) are germane. If that approach were taken, it would make the Home Secretary responsible for policing throughout the country. Perhaps that is what he wants. We will find out as the Bill proceeds.
	It is interesting to contrast those powers with the backstop, as the Home Secretary called it, or what I might describe as window dressingthe community call for action, which would impose duties on local ward councillors to sort out crime and disorder in the areas that they represent, backed up by a council overview and scrutiny committee that can issue reports to relevant authorities, but without any teeth to ensure that any of the recommendations in its reports is followed up. The process seems highly bureaucratic and less effective than existing arrangements.
	Safer neighbourhood teams are already holding public meetings and fostering a direct relationship with their communities. A direct relationship with a safer neighbourhood team may be more effective than the bureaucratic approach of referring an issue to a ward councillor, and I am looking forward to the regulations specifying how quickly the ward councillor must respond. What additional resources will be made available to ward councillors to process requests? The scrutiny committees will review such matters and make recommendations, which is not the most effective way to ensure that action is taken on the ground quickly, efficiently and effectively to deal with antisocial behaviour in local communities.

Mark Pritchard: Does my hon. Friend agree that localism would be enhanced by directly elected police commissioners setting local priorities, rather than by local priorities being set in Whitehall by the Home Secretary?

James Brokenshire: I agree that the local community should have a greater sense of control. The regionalisation debate is framed by the fact that local people feel powerless when it comes to influencing the direction and emphasis of local policing. My hon. Friend has made a powerful point, and I look forward to developing that thought process on ensuring that local communities have a greater say and a greater involvement in how local policing is undertaken in their areas. The Bill is a missed opportunity to promote, debate, discuss and emphasise such approaches.
	My second point concerns the creation of the new chief inspector for justice, community safety and custody. I know that that process has been driven to some extent by the Gershon savings that the Chancellor has sought to impose to make the inspectorates more efficient, but my concern is that the inspectorates should not become less effective. I know that the loss of the chief inspector of prisons has rung alarm bells at a time when standards in prisons and, in particular, standards in young people's secure accommodation are at the forefront, given the Carlile inquiry on children in secure accommodation.
	I note that the Bill contains specific provisions on how the inspection of prisons is undertaken, but the chief inspector of prisons, Anne Owers,
	remains concerned that, over time and in practice, the sharp focus and robustly independent voice of the Prisons Inspectorate may be lost or muffled within a larger whole.
	Juliet Lyon of the Prison Reform Trust has also emphasised that view:
	The sharp focus on the treatment of prisoners and prison conditions, and the immense authority carried by a succession of post holders and admired across the world cannot but be diluted by these new suggested arrangements.
	That concern is clearly significant, and I note that the Home Secretary referred to it in his initial comments. When a combination of all the inspectorates is brought to bear, it is important that the standards, knowledge and ability that allow proper inspections to take place are maintained.
	My final point builds on the strong comments by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) on the opportunity to review the Extradition Act 2003. Although the Bill includes some amendments to the 2003 Act, I am disappointed that the opportunity has not been taken to address the manifestly unjust and unfair arrangements that have sprung up as a result of the 2003 Act, which are shown most acutely in the current relationship between the United States and this country.
	The Prime Minister has said that the Bill is intended to address issues of terrorism, and there is a broad consensus on the need to be able to deal with those suspected of terrorism efficiently and effectively, but the operation of the 2003 Act has not been limited to such cases. I do not intend to stray into commenting on individual cases, but it seems strange that there appears to be no direct reciprocity between the US and the UK. The situation is imbalanced, because the UK must make out some form of prima facie case in seeking to extradite people from the United States to this country, yet that does not happen in reverse. The fact that we must make a basic case, whereas the US does not, strikes me as iniquitous and grossly unfair.
	Whatever the rights or wrongs of any specific case, it is clear that the current arrangements with the US could lead to significant miscarriages of justice and that the Government have failed to stand up for the interests of the citizens of this country. The Home Office has the opportunity to do something about that in this Bill, and for the sake of justice I urge it to seize the opportunity to address the serious imbalance in the extradition arrangements between the US and the UK.

Annette Brooke: I apologise for not being present at the beginning of this important debate, although I have contacted the Speaker's office to explain why.
	I share the concerns expressed by hon. Members while I have been in the Chamber about the proposed amalgamation of police forces. I am particularly sad that the federation model has been rejected for Dorset, because it is what people really want.
	I shall comment on the Bill in relation to children and young people, who are often blamed for crime and, in particular, antisocial behaviour. Although young people may be involved in many instances of antisocial behaviour, it is untrue to say that they are always responsible, and I share the concerns expressed by many organisations that we must not demonise young people. Even if we accept that some children and young people cause antisocial behaviour, we must remember that a large number of young people are the victims of antisocial behaviour.
	When we consider the children and young people who may cause antisocial behaviour or crime, we must examine the reasons for their behaviour. I welcome the recognition by the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) of the importance of youth services. I have said many times that we started with enforcement and punishment, but that we should have paid much more attention to understanding underlying causes and implementing preventive measures at an earlier stage. I welcome the statement within the respect action plan that we must tackle root causes with the same vigour and determination with which we have taken on antisocial behaviour. It is important to get the right balance between enforcement on antisocial behaviour and tackling the causes of antisocial behaviour.
	Clause 4 includes new proposals on community support officers, and I welcome the increase in the number of CSOs. I have been impressed by the contribution made by the few CSOs whom I have met in my constituency, where we would like our fair share of the proposed sixfold increase. CSOs have walked around and engaged with young people, and their job involves balancing enforcement with part of the role of a youth support worker. It is important that the standard set of powers that they will have should be accompanied by statutory requirements for training. A recent Home Office evaluation of the role of CSOs found that many of them expressed concern about that. If there is to be more training, resources will need to be made available to ensure that CSOs receive adequate and appropriate training on how to work effectively, safely and appropriately with children and young people.
	The Children's Society, on behalf of the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, calls for the proposed training to include an understanding of child protection and the procedures and services that will enable CSOs to act in the best interests of children, instead of taking a straightforward enforcement approach to their situation and behaviour. At a local level, it argues that such training should be consistent with the local safeguarding children's board arrangements and responsibilities for training. Will the Minister therefore ensure that there is full co-operation with her colleague the Minister for Children and Families?
	Clause 5 contains a proposal to introduce a new function for CSOs to allow them to remove young people of school age whom they believe to be absent from school without lawful authorityin other words, an extension of sweeping. I have a few concerns about that. The National Foundation for Educational Research concluded that although truancy sweeps had been successful, in terms of the numbers of young people picked up, and had raised awareness of the issue, it was
	less certain of the long-term impact on individual pupil attendance.
	We need, as always, to get the right balance between enforcement and measures that will encourage children to attend school. Merely sweeping and punishing does not solve the problem. There may be a great need to address family difficulties that are part and parcel of the reason why the child or young person is staying away from school. Perhaps the Department for Education and Skills should be thinking about the curriculum.
	There are many reasons why young people truant. One of my great concerns has been young carers getting caught up in sweeps. Young carers have many reasons for being unable to attend school. Sometimes the calls on them from home are such that they cannot get there. It is a difficult choice for them. There is clearly a need for greater support for this invisible army of young people, an enormous number of whomup to 100,000are giving up large portions of their lives and may get caught up in truancy sweeps in the process. Of course, some young people need to be caught and dealt with appropriately, but it should not be a blanket measurethere should be an understanding of the underlying problems.
	Clause 15 places a duty on ward councillors to respond to a call for action from anybody living or working in the area that they represent about a crime and disorder matter in that area. There are concerns that that mechanism could stigmatise young people and alienate them from their communities. For example, it could lead to an extension of the use of naming and shaming by publicly identifying individual children or families. I have spoken out before about my deep concern about naming and shaming in relation to antisocial behaviour orders. That might sometimes work in terms of protecting a community, but ASBOs have been imposed on children with learning difficulties and mental disorders, and it is outrageous to name and shame such children and families. Concern about such behaviour is probably the most frequently raised issue in our surgeries, but we have to tackle it in the right way. It is all too easy for people to say that the problem is down to this family or that family. Calls for action must involve a measured response, possibly involving full consultation within the wider community, and certainly involving children and young people.
	Clauses 16 and 17 cover parenting contracts and orders. When I served on the Committee on the Anti-social Behaviour Bill, I was very cautious about parenting orders. I accept, as I have said publicly before, that they have been successful in some cases. I thought that parents forced to sit in parenting classes would simply fold their arms and refuse to participate, but although that might have happened sometimes, I have heard about great successes. There is a place for these measures, but again we need to look at the wider picture. Ideally, parents should co-operate voluntarily. We need widespread parenting support right across the community as a basic way of life. It should be universal, and not delivered in such a stigmatised fashion.
	Poor parenting undoubtedly contributes to some of the problematic behaviour by children and young people, but it is not the only cause. Some children might misbehave in the community as a way of crying out about what is happening in the home. Perhaps they are being abused or there are problems with their parents. Children's organisations suggest that social services should carry out an assessment of need under section 17 of the Children Act 1989. The Government could be more receptive to such suggestions. We have had the tough sidelet us look at some of the difficult cases in which the behaviour of children and young people has tragic causes.
	Finally, I should like to comment on a very sad outcome of the Home Office's legislation. The United Kingdom locks up more children than most other industrialised countries. In 2004, in England, 4,461 children aged 15 and under were detained in custody. The total number of under-18s detained was about 10,000enough to fill 10 secondary schools. The recently published Carlile inquiry report clearly shows the damage done to children in custodial settings. Restraint that involves the deliberate infliction of violence is used systematically in penal custody. In her annual report, published in January 2005, the chief inspector of prisons raised serious concerns about the use of physical force on children in prison. Twenty-nine children have died in custody since 1990, 28 of whom hanged themselves. One 15-year-old died after being restrained by three staff at a privately run secure training centre. Nine of those 29 children were on remand.
	Children in penal custody are known to be among the most disadvantaged in our society. More than a quarter have the literacy and numeracy of an average seven year old. Eighty-five per cent. show signs of a personality disorder. More than half have been in care or involved with social services, and most have been excluded from school. The Commission for Racial Equality has shown that black children are twice as likely to end up in prison as at university. In 2004, 3,337 children who were assessed as vulnerable were nevertheless sent to young offender institutions.
	Yes, we are being asked to tackle antisocial behaviour and crime and there is a need to do that. However, I make my final appeal: we must deal with the problem of all those children who are locked up in what appear to be very unsatisfactory conditions.

Douglas Carswell: I apologise to the House, especially Front Benchers, for missing the opening stages of the debate. As I explained to the Chair, I was unavoidably detained. I shall study tomorrow's Hansard with even greater rigour than usual.
	I have problems with the Bill because it is a centralising measure. It will centralise control over our police and criminal justice system. That is ironic, given that the Minister of Communities and Local Government has spoken about the need for localism, passing powers to local communities and double devolution.
	Since the Police Act 1964, the police have been run on  the basis of tripartite local accountability. Responsibility for overseeing local policing has been shared between the chief constable, the Home Office and police authorities. There has therefore been an effective system of local police accountability, which has been gradually eroded by Governments of both parties. However, the Bill, especially part 1, marks the stage at which policing becomes the responsibility of the quango state, which will now take on top-down responsibility for running policing in this country.
	Part 1 allows the Home Secretary to give directions to police forces and authorities without the need for a negative inspection report. The Government claim that the directions will be used as a last resort but hon. Members have been rightly sceptical about that. Such provisions set a precedent for further top-down management. Part 1 also moves provisions that govern the structure and functions of police authorities from primary to secondary legislation, partly in preparation for force restructuring. It gives central Governmentthe remote litesthe power to shape and restructure our local police forces at will.
	I also have a problem with part 3, which contains provisions superficially to deal with antisocial behaviour. I welcome any initiative to tackle that, but I do not believe that the Bill does it in the right way. It refers to local accountability, especially two models of greater local accountability: a new role for local authority oversight committees in scrutinising crime and disorder reduction partnerships, and a new mechanism called the community call for action. Those models of local accountability are more corporatist than democratic. I have difficulty in accepting that they enhance local accountability.
	Part 4 covers merging the different inspectorates in the criminal justice system. The inspectorate that inspects the Crown Prosecution Service has a good record of revealing that institution's incompetence. A significant proportion of cases that the CPS handles are abandoned every year in error. Many hon. Members who have spoken know about the frustration that the police feel when they successfully pursue criminals through the streets only for the CPS to fail to pursue them as vigorously through the courts. The inspectorate has been good at revealing those failings, and the Government should focus on them, rather than restructuring the inspectorate.
	A letter written by a serving police officer and submitted anonymously appeared in last week's Clacton Gazette and Harwich and Manningtree Standard. It is touching because it shows the sense of frustration experienced by a professional police officer who feels unable to change things and deal with the top-down management. Indeed, he or she concludes the letter by writing:
	Believe at your peril the rhetoric from the top. If you want the truth, we at the bottom know what it will mean to you.
	That brings home the sense of top-down micro-management.
	The Bill should provide for genuine local accountability and direct democracy. It should go in the opposite direction from the one that it takes. Power should be shifted from the Home Office to the locality. We should replace existing police authority structures, which lack effective accountability, the ability to scrutinise chief constables and, increasingly, legitimacy, with directly elected police chiefs.
	Some people use the term police commissioner but I prefer sheriff. We should have directly elected sheriffs instead of police authorities. It is all very well for police authority members to have a cup of tea with the chief constable. That may be nice for them, even if the chief constable is Sir Ian Blair, but it does nothing to enhance local accountability. If we had a directly elected sheriff instead of police authorities, we would experience genuine local accountability.

Stephen Pound: Dirty Harry.

Douglas Carswell: This is not Americanisation. The word sheriff derives from an ancient English termthe shire reeve. We would thus restore to this country an ancient institution, which we gave the new world, and which has given it lower crime rates. It is less John Wayne or Dirty Harry and more Rudy Giuliani. He cut crime in New York by 60 per cent. in 10 years and he was locally accountable. We need directly elected people like Rudy Giuliani running our police in this country, not the unaccountable Home Office.

David Howarth: I am trying to follow the hon. Gentleman's argument, but he should know that Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor of New York city. The chief of police was appointed directly by the mayor, not directly elected. The hon. Gentleman cannot therefore use that specific example for his argument.

Douglas Carswell: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his helpful interventionbut we can use the example, because in the model that I advocate, a mayor directly elected in an area co-terminous with a police authority area could take on that responsibility. Where that did not happen, a sheriff, rather than a police authority, could make the appointment. As with the mayor of New York, there would be a separation of operational responsibilities and the ability to appoint the head of the police to exercise those responsibilities. I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to clarify that. I should be happy to send him a copy of a paper that I have written on the matter, if he would like that.
	The 2004 White Paper was encouraging because it covered decentralisation, but I regret to say that the Bill does not deliver that. Instead, it paves the way for the merger of police forcesfor regionalisation, not greater local accountability. Almost every year, irrespective of which party is in government, we appear to have a police Bill. However, until we achieve effective local control, we shall never get the local policing that people want. Until we push power down to the local level and have democratic, not corporatist, local accountability, we will get the policing that the remote lites want us to have. Until we make the change to genuine localism, crime and disorder will continue to increase every year.

Philip Hollobone: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Carswell) on yet another example of his fresh and original thinking, which is increasingly a hallmark of Conservative Members. I know how hard my hon. Friend works on behalf of his constituents and I greatly enjoyed his contribution.
	I thank all those engaged in law enforcement and the criminal justice system in the Kettering constituency, and I make a plea to the Government to use the Bill as an opportunity to rename the criminal justice system the victims justice system. I do not think that I have heard the word victim at all in the whole debate, and I have been here since the beginning. We often forget that we are talking about victims of crime, and victims of bad acts often committed by bad people. If the Government were to change the name of the criminal justice system as I have described, that would help to change our focus on this important topic.
	I have spent 18 days out of 22 on the police service parliamentary scheme, and I have four exciting days lined up, including three nights on the streets of Kettering, before the end of March. Speaking on the Bill gives me the opportunity to draw to the Minister's attention some of the lessons that I have learned while on patrol with local officers. To sum it all up, I want to get across to the Minister the fact that 90 per cent. of crime in the Kettering constituency is committed by 50 persistent and prolific offenders. All the police officers and others engaged in the criminal justice system to whom I have spoken have said the same, no matter which part of the country they come from.
	Before I move on to that theme, I shall highlight two specific points. The Government are thinking about changing the powers given to police community support officers. On one of the nights when I was on patrol with the local police in Kettering, we ended up in a village called Barton Seagrave, where the police officer and the two PCSOs I was with did their best to disperse 30 youths who were congregating around the local school and the local community centre. The police officer did his very best and he could issue a fixed penalty notice and arrest another suspect. However, the PCSOs could not do anything apart from appear there in their visible police uniform. That is because at that time, Barton Seagrave was not designated as a dispersal zone. It is, I am glad to say, now designated as such a zone and those PCSOs are regularly deployed to Castle way and the streets off it in Barton Seagrave, and have the powers to disperse those youths. Without the dispersal zone status, they would not have that power. The Bill covers the powers that the Government give to PCSOs, so will the Minister give them the power to disperse people without the need for dispersal zone designation?
	My other point is perhaps a little more mundane, and relates to my role as a councillor on Kettering borough council. The council helps to fund the eight PCSOs in Kettering, and the original idea was that they would walk down Kettering high street and deal with all sorts of infringements of the lawcriminal or otherwise. One of the issues that the council particularly wanted them to be involved with was problem parking and car parking offences. The chief constable of Northamptonshire has ruled that PCSOs should not have that power, so Kettering still has a car parking problem. The idea of having a law enforcement officer tackling all sorts of issues, such as car parking and criminal behaviour, just by walking down the street cannot be carried out in Kettering. I understand that PCSOs in other police force areas have ticketing powers, so could the Minister address that point?
	I now return to my main themethat persistent and prolific offenders commit 90 per cent. of the crime. In the northern police area in Northamptonshire, which includes Kettering, Rothwell, Desborough, Burton Latimer and Corby borough, 50 individuals commit that proportion of the crime. The police know who they are, and their pictures and names are on the wall in Kettering police station. The persistent and prolific offendersPPOs, to use the jargonknow that the police know who they are. The whole business is a game of catching the PPOs in the act.
	The people of this country deserve better than that, and I have come to the conclusion that the only way to tackle the issue seriously is to take the PPOs out of the equation. To be brutally frank, they are bad people doing bad things. Prison is not tough enough for them. Many of them who are arrested and put in prison see it as a break. They have recreational facilities, they are well fed and they often have televisions in their cells. Many are disappointed to be released even if it is just a third of the way through their sentence.
	The police are advised when the offenders will be released on to the streets of Kettering again and they try to catch them in the act the first weekend after they are released. I have drawn up the simple equation of dividing the costs for local policing in Kettering, the local court system, the local prison, the probation service and all the rest by 50, which represents the number of PPOs. That shows that a huge sum of public money goes on each of these hardened criminals.
	I am afraid that we are not going to change these people's habits. They are always going to be criminals until they decide otherwise. We have to come up with some kind of system whereby such people are not allowed their liberty until they promise not to reoffendand the Bill provides a perfect opportunity to do that. The pressure should be on them to demonstrate that they are prepared to be responsible, and not on the rest of us to try to catch them in the act yet again.
	Northamptonshire police excel in two specific respectsforensics and automated number plate recognition technology. However, both are under threat. I am pleased to say that Northamptonshire police force is one of the best in the country at forensics, which basically involves fingerprint technology and the use of DNA. Twenty years ago, there were regional police forensic departments. That was changed and the service moved down to force level, and all the evidence demonstrates that forensics work best with a force of about 1,500 officers. They are particularly effective at detecting car crime and burglary, and the use of fingerprint or DNA technology accounts for the detection of 50 per cent. of all the detected crimes in Northamptonshire. One of my real concerns is that as the Government try to create the super-forces, the forensics skills base will be broken up. Once it is broken up, it will be very difficult to re-establish.
	The second technology-related issue is automated number plate recognitionANPRand the Bill contains proposals to reorganise the computer department of the Home Office. The technology already exists and is deployed in Northamptonshire to read number plates automatically. The system is so fast that when a suspect car drives past an ANPR camera, that fact is flashed up in the control room and the reasons why the car is suspicious are also listed. Officers are deployed to apprehend the vehicle. The police know who the criminals are, which cars they drive and where the cars are. Unfortunately, not enough resources are being put into ANPR technology, and my worry is that the skills base in the Northamptonshire force will be eroded.
	The technology offers huge opportunities across the country. Why do we not have ANPR technology employed on all the major motorways up and down the country? The technology is there and we could cut the motorway network off for all the known criminals in the   country. That would have a dramatic effect on reducing crime.
	In Northamptonshire there are now four basic command units. As of 1 April, there will be two. At the moment, Kettering and Corby form one BCU; next door, Wellingborough and East Northants form another. As of 1 April, they will become one BCU. Despite all the talk about BCUs being coterminous with borough-level local authorities, that will simply not be the case in Northamptonshire. In north Northamptonshire there will be four district authorities to one basic command unit. I am afraid that policing is about to become more remote, rather than more local.
	Finally, I want to reiterate a point that is often missed. The criminal justice system should be known as the victims justice system. We know who the criminals are, we know where they live, and we know what cars they drive. The skills base and the technology to deal with them already exist; we just need to make better use of them, rather than bringing in new legislation.

Andrew MacKinlay: I am grateful to have caught your eye in this debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because the Bill is extensive and covers several important subjects, as is outlined in its long title. I want to address some of my comments to those subjects.
	Attendance in the House is thin tonight, and I believe that that reflects the cosy consensus between the Front Benches of the Government, the so-called Opposition and the Liberal party. That consensus is giving a bye to important legislation whose broad thrust might not be controversial but whose details certainly call for considerable improvement in Committee or on Report, or require us to caution the Government to reflect and think again.
	I notice that the long title of the Bill contains the words:
	to make further provision for combatting crime and disorder.
	I speak as someone who is on the left of politics, but I nevertheless believe that the sentences that our courts dispenseat the behest of Parliament; obviously guidance on these matters comes from usare wholly inadequate in relation to violent crime, particularly against the person and against small retail outlets whose livelihoods are threatened by theft accompanied by violence. The way in which the long title of the Bill is drawn leads me to believe that the Bill is amendable in this regard. We need to pass stronger sentences against the increasing amount of violence that is being perpetrated, regrettably, among young people.
	Last Friday, I visited my constituents, Mr. and Mrs. Daly, whose son Ryan was murdered on his 18th birthday. The Crown Prosecution Service subsequently accepted a plea of manslaughter, and the sentence passed on the person who killed Ryan Daly was in my view derisory. That is also the view in my constituency, where feelings are running high about the inadequacy of a criminal justice system that allowed a wholly inadequate sentence passed on the person who killed that delightful boy on his 18th birthday. I shall reflect on that during the passage of the Bill, because I want to make it clear that we need much stronger, longer prison sentences for such crimes.
	I do not wish to detain the House unduly, but the subject of police powers has exercised me since I was elected in 1992. I have raised the matter on a number of occasions under Home Secretaries Howard, Straw and Clarke, but I have done so in vain. The Bill gives me the opportunity to rehearse some of the points that the Government should consider, and which I believe they will ultimately implement. The problem under our parliamentary system is that, all too often, Back Benchers counsel the Government as to the prudent course of action, only to have their advice dismissed by Ministers because it has come from a Back Bencher, and because the Ministers take their narrow advice from people in the Home Office without listening to elected politicians, often those on their own side.
	I want to address the question of police powers and the various police agencies. I hope that I shall be able to table amendments to the Bill to give effect to my proposals. First, however, I want to deal with the question of police force mergers. I suspect that many hon. Members think that the Bill deals only with mergers. It is an important issue. I recognise that we need police forces that maximise scarce resources, particularly in regard to new technologies. They also need to be highly mobile and fully kitted out. However, since about 1973, we have had an obsession with reorganisation in every part of the public service, and the end product has not necessarily been a better service. I notice the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) nodding. I think that his father was the first Minister to carry out some of those reorganisations, along with Sir Keith Joseph. There was nothing wrong with doing that in the public sector, but we have since had an obsession with reorganisation, under both Conservative and Labour Governments, and I question whether this painting of the Forth bridge has really created better public services. I want to caution the Government that the mergers of the police authorities might be for their own sake, rather than being driven by common sense, and that the desired effect could be achieved under existing powers.

Bernard Jenkin: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman was in his place when I spoke in the debate earlier. He is precisely echoing my point that this is a disease of the public sector, and that it has got worse and worse. When the problems become insurmountable, we implement a reorganisation rather than tackling them.

Andrew MacKinlay: Indeed. That is a general point, but it also relates to the police. When we implement mergers, we lose talented people and we have to spend public money on retiring people early. I want to express my real irritation about this matter. I have told the Government before that the onus is on them to convince me that there is an overriding case for so-called reorganisations and mergers, both in the police and in other parts of the public service.
	The existing police force in Essex is about the optimum size. If it were to stay as it is, it would not be the smallest of the new; it would still be a reasonable-sized authority. It has the full range of police duties and responsibilities. It has stewardship of Stansted airport, and responsibility for a substantial part of the M25. I should say, in parenthesis, that traffic policing is a particularly skilled and harrowing police duty that is performed extraordinarily well by Essex police. The force also has some of the longest riparian and coastal frontage of any police force in the country. It is a good, highly experienced unit, and to merge it either with Suffolk and Norfolk or with Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire would be a profound mistake. I hope that the Home Secretary will reflect on the fact that such views are held not only by Conservative Members of Parliament. As the only Labour Back Bencher representing Essex, I take the view that we should keep Essex police force as it is.
	On the question of governance, I am worried that the police authorities will either become rather large, numerically, or be inadequately represented. In the Essex police force area, we have the unitary authorities of Southend and of Thurrock, and I want jealously to safeguard the direct representation of my unitary authority on the police authority. That brings us back to the compelling case for maintaining Essex as it is.
	Reference has been made to basic command units, and I want to express some disappointment that Essex has merged my BCU with Basildon. Again, that is part of the obsession with reorganisation. Where there is a unitary authority, there should be a BCU, just as all the other public services should fit into the unitary authority, be it the various health trusts or other agencies. Unitaries work best when all the local government powers are being fulfilled not just by the local government unit, but by all the other related agencies, and they have the same boundariesthere is coterminosity.
	That may not be a matter for the Home Secretary, but I hope that he might reflect on the fact that when he is giving advice to police authorities, he should urge them to be sensitive to unitary authority boundaries in deciding what their BCUs should be.

Mark Francois: I thank my fellow Essex Member of Parliament for giving way and endorse his comments on the future of Essex police. Does he agree that one problem that we have had with internal mergers is the high turnover of BCU commanders and that that does not always make for good continuity with the local population? It would be ideal if, now that those internal changes have gone through, we could have some stability in who the top cops are at local level.

Andrew MacKinlay: I am sure the hon. Gentleman is correct. Without hesitation, I am happy to endorse the view that he has expressed to the House on the need for some settlement to enable our commanders to build up a  relationship with the communitythe formal representational community of local authorities as well as community leadersand to undertake familiarisation. There is often far too frequent a turnover, or a revolving door, in appointments of key personnel.
	I want to move on from the question of mergers, although I should express some caution about the proposal to merge the inspectorates. I would have thought that the inspectorate of constabulary should be maintained. I see great dangers in bringing those inspectorates together, as compelling as the arguments might be, although no doubt they are driven by the need to reduce costs. Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary is highly regarded and I see no compelling case for it to be merged with any other inspectorate, no matter how important. Indeed, those inspectorates are important, but that is an argument for them to be stand-alone too.
	I want to discuss the question of the powers of the various police officers and police forces and community support officers. I am not being sarcastic when I say that I welcome the Conservative party's change in attitude towards CSOs. They are one of the Government's great successes and the Conservatives should be generous enough to acknowledge that. CSOs were introduced with a great deal of criticism, but now each of those officers is highly valued in our community and we need more of them.
	My view, however, is that CSOs should be given constable powers. That is where successive Home Secretaries have been too nervous or have been given the wrong counsel by people in the Home Office. Hon. Members have already said that we can get some good, highly-qualified people who can exercise good judgmentthey are selected for that. These are not people who are just taken from the jobcentre; they are selected people of good quality.
	Often, such officers would hithertoa decade or more agohave been admitted to the police force as police officers. They should be sworn in as constables and, although their powers could be limited by statute, they should have the capacity to arrest over and above that power which every citizen has. That would strengthen their status, especially as, under the Bill, the area in which they can exercise their remit will extend nationwide if they are loaned to other police authorities. Currently, their powers are limited to the constabulary for which they work.
	When the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) was Home Secretary and subsequently, I argued that the office of constable should be of a minimum standard laid down by statute. Many people are sworn as constables and they do a good job. I want to refer to them. There are parks police in Wandsworth and in Greenwich. Also, there are constables in some ports, but not in others. I shall return to that in a moment.
	We also have some big non-Home Office forces, such as the Ministry of Defence police, British Transport police and the constabulary that looks after the UK Atomic Energy Authority's establishments. There is a variance as to their powers, which also applies to training. There should be some consistencya minimum so that a constable, whoever he or she serves, has had basic training. That should be extended to CSOs. It would be very enhancing indeed.
	I have produced private Members' Bills and have tried to interest those successive Home Secretaries in the need, in extremis, for all constables to have power to act. The Royal Parks police, which is a highly skilled force, has no more jurisdiction than you or I, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to arrest a person outside the curtilage of the royal parks. That is bonkers. Also, a ports policeman cannot use his discretion as a constable outside the curtilage of the port. That is madnessa waste.
	There should be a constant standard and a policeman should have the duty to act as a policeman in extremis or in support of another police officer wherever appropriate. I would have thought this a good legislative opportunity for making such an amendment. British Transport police officers have had their powers marginally shifted in the last few years, but even officers of the MOD police, some of whom can be seen wearing policemen's uniform and wearing the traditional policeman's hat, have limited powers outside the curtilage or immediate vicinity of MOD establishments. That is ridiculous. This is an opportunity to extend, in extremis, the powers of all police officers and CSOs to act as constables and in support of any other police officer when necessary.
	Special constables, who are not paid but greatly valued, are sworn as constables, in contrast with CSOs, who are full-time but not sworn. We have some good part-timersunpaid volunteersbut they have the status of constable, which underlines the fact that it is illogical that CSOs cannot be constables.
	I notice that, sensibly, special constables will now be able to carry out their functions in any part of England where they are on loan to another chief constable, but that makes it nonsensical to deprive people who are ports, parks or MOD police of that capacity. There should be a general review of the extent of the powers of all police officers.
	The Bill does not cover the costs of policing our airports, but extensive reference is made to the powers of the police in what are referred to as aerodromes. That needs to be looked at expeditiously by the Home Office, because the existing arrangements are ludicrous and unfair to the council tax payer. For instance, BAA has to pay for the policing of Stansted airport, basically on the demand of Essex police authorityI think that is the correct course. Broadly, the system is that the chief constable of Essex can say, with the support of his authority, that he requires certain policing at Stansted, although there is an appeals and disputes procedure while close by in Luton there is no such payment by the airport. The council tax payer in Bedfordshire meets the full cost of policing there. There should be parity of treatment, for a number of reasons. There should be fairness to the council tax payer and fair competition; there should also be a proper standard of policing in all our airports, commensurate with the size of the airports and the number of customers using them. Surely the Bill could have made such provision, for those reasons and also in the interests of the Home Office.
	Clause 8 extends the power of the police to search at aerodromes. I do not understand why it does not include seaports. Since 1992, I have drawn attention to the inadequate policing at many of our seaports, large and small. When the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythewho led the Conservative party at the last general electionwas Home Secretary, I proposed the establishment of a ports police force. He dismissed the idea. At the last election, the proposal became Conservative policy. Regrettably, because of the way in which politics works in this country, my colleagues in the Labour party opposed it because it had been proposed by the right hon. and learned Gentleman. That is the kind of nonsense that happens in the United Kingdom. I think that it would be very sensible to establish ports and border police at our seaports; indeed, I consider it reckless not to make such provision.
	My constituency has an extensive river frontage. We have the port of Tilbury, which does have a dedicated police force. I am very proud of that, and so, rightly, are those who work at the port. The force is small and has no critical mass, but at least it is there, and its presence greatly reduces the likelihood of organised crime such as people-smuggling. Regrettably, the force was privatised under the last Conservative Administration, but it is staffed by dedicated police officers.
	On other parts of the river frontage, there are no police officers. Boats arrive from the continent two or three times a day, and there is no Home Office immigration, no Customs and Excise and no police officer. Do you think, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that those involved in organised crime do not know that? I have told successive Home Secretaries about it. They have massaged me, as it were, by allowing me to talk to the Home Office police adviser, and a delightful man he was too, but that will not stop organised crime in and through our seaports.
	Successive Home Secretaries have plugged holes at Sangatte and other places, but they have not addressed the real problem. People enter the United Kingdom via a number of seaports, especially on the east coast, because there is no police force there. We need a dedicated, highly mobile force. They cannot be at every wharf or port all the time, but the mere fact that they could be there quickly and carry out operations would enable us to combat illegal immigration, people-smuggling and other crimes perpetrated by those who go in and out of our ports with containers.
	I have just returned from the United States. The question of the Dubai ports was a big issue, and I was amazed that it had not been a bigger issue here. I do not want to go into the details of a debate that amounts to a scrap between Republicans and Democrats, but the United States Administration are likely to extract a price from the Dubai ports for their acquisition of PO to proceed. They will probably pay for increased screening of containers.
	I think that only about 3 per cent. of our containers are screened at our seaports. If the Dubai ports, or any other part of the port industry in north America, has to pay more for new screening technologies, that should be good for us in the United Kingdom and western Europe too. I think that there is a powerful case for seaport security and policing to be paid for by the user, per container. A small payment on each container would help to fund a dedicated ports police in this country. What happens in the United States is not our business, but if its ports industry is to pay more for technologies to combat crime, surely we are justified in saying that we should benefit from such resources too.
	Clause 9 provides for additional police powers to collect information relating to flights and voyages. I support that, because I do not dismiss the gravity of the war against terrorism. I always felt that terrorism posed a serious threat, even before 11 September, and my view has not changed. That is why I feel so strongly about our seaports, and have detained the House on the issue. Nevertheless, collecting all that information on what the Bill describes as flights and voyages will not be much use without law enforcement officerspoliceat our ports, who are able to reach the various wharves that surround the United Kingdom, particularly those on the east coast.
	The Bill also confers additional powers on trading standards authorities. I imagine that the aim is to combat such offences as counterfeiting and breach of copyright, which is most necessary. Local authorities will have to use those powers. All too often, local authorities do not exercise their existing powers, because there are not enough trading standards officers to enforce them. I hope that the Bill will enable us to will the means, and persuade local authorities that trading standards are a high priority in the combating of crime, and organised crime in particular. Illegally copied compact discs on our market stalls frequently represent the end of a major criminal operation across the country.
	Clause 38 extends the police complaints machinery to those who enforce asylum and immigration policies. I consider it very necessary. I have been very distressed by raids by immigration and asylum organisations and the Home Office on families asleep in their beds at 6 am on Sundays. Families do not run. Single men who are economic migrants, are by definition transient. In many instances, it is difficult for the asylum and immigration services to arrest them.
	I regret to say that we are in the numbers game. When the Home Office knows that a family is involved, its personnel will move in at 6 o'clock on a Sunday morning and round up the lot. I find that extremely distasteful, and I believe that the police officers who are in attendance find it distasteful as well. It is one of the most harrowing and unjustified situations that can be created. However, when successive politicians stand at the Dispatch Box and argue about figures, rounding up a family of seven or nine on a Sunday morning looks good in terms of headline figures. The people concerned were all together. There is no necessity for such action. I believe that, regrettably, there have been grounds for considerable complaint and investigation, and I am glad that there will now be more opportunities for people to complain and to seek reviews of what has happened.
	Members have mentioned the extradition provision. I am amazed that, although the United Kingdom has entered into a treaty with the United States of America and we are acting on it in good faith, the United States Senate has not endorsed it. I cannot understand why we tolerate that. It is a two-way process. Our bargaining chip is saying to Uncle Sam You can have this facility, provided that you do right by us. When I was in the United States last week, I expressed bewilderment that the Senate had not passed the treaty. I was given a variety of reasons, one of which was that it feared that people who had left Northern Ireland might be affected.
	I would not have thought, with all the legislation that we are passing now, that that was a problem, to be candid, but I think that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary could say, This treaty is available. The Queen has signed it. The UK has fulfilled its side of the bargain, but the treaty cannot be triggered until your legislature delivers its side of the bargain too. It is absurd. I ask the Minister to explain the logic of that. I do not say that sarcastically. I simply do not understand why we are acting in that way when the United States legislature, the Senate, is failing to implement the treaty.
	The treaty has been in existence not for months but for years. I urge the Minister to reflect on that matter. Otherwise, there is a powerful case for the Bill to be used as a vehicle for amending the treaty or suspending it. I do not talk about individual cases. I have no brief. I want wrongdoers to be brought to justice as expeditiously as possible either side of the Atlantic, but there has to be parity of treatment.
	For those reasons, it is useful for Parliament to explore the Bill. It contains a variety of measures, some of which are most welcome, and some of which we should treat with caution and perhaps amend during the legislative process. Above all, I hope that the Minister will reflect on the fact that the Bill is a wonderful opportunity to beef up the powers of community support officers and constables, whether they are in Home Office forces or the other forces to which I have referred. It is also a wonderful opportunity to think again about having a highly mobile, technical border or ports police, paid for by the ports industry, and to ensure that funding for policing our airports is appropriate, fair and balanced in terms of competition and the charge that should be forced on the council tax payer.

Mark Francois: I am delighted to be the fourth Essex Member of Parliament to be called to speak in the debate, following very good speeches by my hon. Friends the Members for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) and for Harwich (Mr. Carswell), and by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay). It is a particular pleasure to follow the hon. Gentleman, as he eloquently expressed his reservations about the proposed mergers in Essex, and was physical testament to the cross-party campaign that we have conducted in our county against those proposals, about which we feel strongly and to which I shall return.
	I commend the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who spoke powerfully and with some passion from the Front Bench. He deconstructed the problems in the Bill, not least in highlighting its centralising tendency, which I deprecate but which I fear I cannot explain as eloquently as he did.
	Neighbourhood policing is a theme that, as the Government have stressed, runs throughout the Bill. That is fine in concept, but I have a couple of practical questions to ask about it. I will take an example from my constituency. We would all like to see more police, but in a particular area in my constituency, Hull Bridge, which is by the River Crouch, people have felt for some time that there has been a dearth of policing and, in particular, of regular patrols by regular officers. That has come through to me in my constituency postbag and, of course these days, also by e-mail, and while I have been out canvassing in Hull Bridge. It cropped up on the doorsteps so often that it was impossible as an MP to ignore the strength of feeling.
	As a result, last summer I organised a petition to encourage local residents in Hull Bridge to express their concern and to call for a regular policing team to be allocated to the area. That, I understand, is similar in concept to neighbourhood policing.
	I presented that petition of some 1,300 signatures to the House on the day we rose for the summer recess last year. I am now actively pursuing the issue with the new divisional commander who covers the area. I wrote to him about it only last week. I hope that, if neighbourhood policing is to mean something in practice, we will see local police commanders doing their best, within the constraints they face, to respond actively to local residents' strong requests for more cover. I hope that the petition will produce a definitive result.
	That leads me to a related point, which I raised in an intervention on the hon. Member for Thurrock, with which I think he had some sympathy and with which I hope the Minister will sympathise, too. It is about continuity in police command appointments. In the past few years, I have seen quite a high turnover in basic command unit appointments. As I understand it, in a number of BCUs, there will now effectively be a two-tier structurethe divisional commander, who will normally be a chief superintendent, and below that a district commander. If, for example, the division covers a number of local authority areas, the district commander will be coterminous, say, with the district or borough council boundary. That is certainly the intention in one of the divisions in my constituency. Therefore, we will have both a divisional commander and a district commander.
	I know who the new divisional commander of one of my divisions will be, but I do not yet know who the new district commander will be. I am keen to find out. My local police have explained to me that the appointment will be made shortly and I accept that explanation, but if those people are to become well known as figureheads in their community, so that people such as MPs can make representations to them, it is important that there is some continuity in appointments and that we do not see the relatively highly turnover in senior posts that we have perhaps seen in recent years. I hope that that is a perfectly reasonable and entirely non-partisan point. I offer it to the Minister and hope that some progress will be made.
	Extradition has been raised by a number of hon. Members, not least in what was a powerful speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson), who put his points across with his characteristic personality. An important point of principle is involved. When these powers were debated in the House not so long ago, Ministers argued that an extradition agreement of such power was necessary to fight international terrorism. That is why the House was asked to approve that measure. That is fine as far as it goes. We can look any other nation in the eye and say that we have stood shoulder to shoulder with our ally the United States in fighting the curse of international terror. There is nothing for which we should apologise to anyone. The problem, I understand, is that the United States authorities have begun to try to use that agreement in ways that clearly go beyond combating international terror.
	I will not stray into matters that are sub judice and raise individual cases. I understand the rules, but I am given to understand that there have been a number of occasions in the past year when the US Internal Revenue Service has attempted to use the treaty to extradite people to the United States to answer charges that they have not paid sufficient tax dollars to the United States Government. I can understand why the IRS might want to try to do that, but that is not the reason that the agreement was made. It is certainly not what Parliament was told when it was asked to approve that powerful measure. As other hon. Members have said, the United States, to add insult to injury, has not ratified the agreement at their end by passing it through the Senate.
	There are likely to be other occasions in the near future when the Government come to the House to ask for special powers to fight terrorism. Indeed, they did so recently when they asked for the power to detain people for 90 days. The House was not convinced of the Government's overall argument and therefore they suffered a defeat.
	If the Government come to this legislature to ask for powers that restrict individual liberty in order to fight terrorism, they have a strong moral obligation to ensure that, if the House grants those powers, they are used only for the purpose for which they were requested. The danger is that, if such a situation gets worse, when the Government, whatever their colour, come to the House, perhaps in an emergency, and ask for such a strong power, the House may be reluctant to grant it. That example may be cited.
	I make a genuine plea to the Minister: this is an anomalous situation and it must be cleared up. Otherwise, there is a danger that, in future, the Government, whatever their colour, will be accused of crying wolf. I hope that that is not an unreasonable point and that the anomaly can be cleared up. The point has been raised by hon. Members on both sides of the House and I hope that she will take it genuinely on board.
	I now want to discuss police authority and police force mergers. The Association of Police Authorities' briefing for this Bill says:
	This Bill deals with proposed reforms to policing which are in addition to the merger of police forces that is currently also being considered, although to some extent the Bill anticipates elements of police restructuring.
	I am pleased that the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety is at the Dispatch Box to hear me raise this issue, because I must emphasise to her in all sincerity that there are genuinely strong feelings in my county on it. If she did not believe that before this evening, I hope that the representations that she has heard tonight from four Essex MPs leave her in absolutely no doubt. Indeed, other MPs from our county have spoken on this issue in other debates, as well.
	Telephone and internet polls conducted by local newspapers show overwhelming support for the view that the Essex force should stand alone. Phone-ins to Essex radio stations have produced a similar result. There is very little support at all among the general public for the Government's proposed mergers, which is not very surprising. We in Essex have a strong sense of identity, as the Minister doubtless realises, and we do not want our policing to be performed remotely by a chief constable based in Cambridge ordare I say it, Mr. Deputy Speaker, with you in the Chair?even in Ipswich. We want our chief constable to be based in Chelmsford, where that person can best understand the needs, security and policing of our county.
	We do not want the council tax to go up, because the policing precept would have to rise. Currently, we in Essex have one of the lowest precepts in East Anglia at 105 a year for band D properties. Norfolk's precept is 145, so under equalisation our precept would undoubtedly have to rise. It is fair to say that Essex council tax payers pay enough as it is, so there is absolutely no enthusiasm for this idea on financial grounds.

Andrew MacKinlay: The hon. Gentleman makes a very powerful point about Essex council tax payers having to pay more. That is true, but the efficiency of the Essex constabulary is matched by its high performance indices. It is a very successful force because it operates at relatively low cost, but maximum efficiency. The hon. Gentleman might like to amplify that point.

Mark Francois: I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, which is entirely right. In most of the examinations carried out by the police, Essex constabulary scores rather highly, so it is not as though the system is broken. The Essex force is not broken and it genuinely does not need to be fixed.

Bernard Jenkin: By way of amplifying the point, our police force is among those with the highest morale in the United Kingdom. I hope that Ministers will reflect on the fact that smaller forces tend to have high morale and larger ones tend to have poorer morale. Of course, the largest force of all, the Met, has the lowest morale.

Hazel Blears: indicated dissent.

Bernard Jenkin: The Minister shakes her head, but I can assure her that that is the case.

Mark Francois: When I served as a young officer in the Territorial Army, I learned a bit about morale. One of the great mottoes that was drummed into me as a junior subaltern was, If it ain't broke, sir, don't fix it. Our police force is not broken and it genuinely does not need fixing. I agree with my hon. Friend and I hope that the Minister will take that point on board.
	The Government have set an arbitrary target for Essex of some 4,000 officers, and Essex regulars currently number about 3,300. However, if the Government press ahead with building all the houses in Essex that they want up to 2021 and the population of Essex increases by hundreds of thousands as a resultI am not in favour of that policy; the Government want 123,000 new houses, which would mean an extra third of a million people, or soit is clear that the number of police will go up pro rata. That would easily take us beyond the 4,000 limit. So if the Minister wants a rationale for her own arbitrary figure looking into the medium term, I have just given it to her.
	I turn to fighting terrorism, which others have touched on. I understand that for the so-called category 2 tasks, the Minister does not favour federation. I think that such an approach has merits, but if she is convinced that that is not what she wants, I have another suggestion for her. We could meet the requirement through a beefed-up Serious Organised Crime Agency's working closely with local forces in certain parts of the country. The chief constable of Essex has suggested that certain tasks are best handled by SOCA, although in fairness, the Essex force has considerable experience in fighting terrorism because of the special facilities at Stansted. The Minister is well aware of that, and she also knows that the Essex force gave considerable assistance to the Met on 7/7. So I do not believe that we are weak in that particular department.
	The Minister will have been involved in negotiations with a number of police authorities in the past few months. She will know that in several areas throughout the countryI do not mean to disparage any other part of the United Kingdomthere has not been unanimity of view. In some counties, the police authority, Members of Parliament, the county council and the chief constable have seen this issue differently and have not necessarily spoken with one voice. However, in Essex precisely the contrary is true. The police authority, the chief constable, Essex county council, the vast bulk of district and borough councils and 15 of the 17 Members of Parliamentincluding the hon. Member for Thurrock, the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell), who has spoken on this issue before, and all Essex's Conservative MPspublicly signed a pledge urging the Minister to listen to us and to allow the Essex police force to continue to stand alone. I cannot speak for every other county in the countryI do not have the precise databut as I stand here this evening, I know of no other county in which there is such firm unanimity of view on this issue as there is in Essex. As I have said, that has been physically evidenced tonight.
	The Prime Minister has said repeatedly that he will listen to local people on this issue. I very much hope that he will, and we in Essex look for some real evidence of that. I very much agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex said about Essex county council's actively considering holding a referendum on this issue if the Government refuse to listen to reason. In other words, if push does come to shove, we will hold a poll across the county to allow people to express a clear opinion on what the Government are trying to do. I am very confident of what the outcome would be, and I suspect that, in her heart, so is the Minister. I ask her seriously not to put us to the trouble of doing that. Our police force is not broken. It is not perfect, but it is overwhelmingly popular. There is cross-party support for it, and political support at all levels in the county. Please, please listen to us, and allow our force to stand alone.

Edward Garnier: I want to begin with an apology. Like a number of Members who have spoken in today's debate, I was not here at the outset to hear the Home Secretary introduce Second Reading. My excuse is that I was obeying the law. Under the Criminal Justice Act 2003or, at least, those of its provisions that repeal the Juries Act 1974my exemption, as a Member of Parliament, from jury service was abolished. Until the passing of the 2003 Act, I was exempt from such service because of my membership of this House, because I am a member of the Bar, and because I am a judge. All three exemptions have gone and I was required to appear at the Old Bailey at 9 o'clock this morning to surrender to jury service.
	I had no particular objection to doing that; however, I have had a frustrating day. Needless to say, on the first occasion that I was called to take part in a trial, I knew the judge and several members of the Bar. Furthermore, the case involved the trial of some prison officersand given that I am shadow Minister with responsibility for Opposition policy on prisons and prison officers, it was thought perhaps inadvisable for me to take part in that trial. However, after lunch I was given the opportunity of another go. That trial, like the first, was projected to last for several monthswell beyond the two weeks for which I had been summoned. Eighty of us were put into the jury-in-waiting, of whom 20 were selected to stand by for next Wednesday and participation in the jury. Needless to say, I was disqualified again because I knew the judgeindeed, I had lunch with him about four weeks agoand a member of the Bar. All in all, it was a deeply frustrating daybecause it meant that I was unable to enjoy the Home Secretary's speech this afternoon. I apologise, through you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to him and to the rest of the House, but I see that I am not the only Member who missed the opening speeches. I am at least here for the closing speeches. There is a category of Member that has missed the opening speeches and the closing speeches, although if they hurry they may catch the Minister of State's response to the debate. I look forward to welcoming those Labour Members who have not found it convenient to be detained here.
	The Bill is something of a curate's egg, which is hardly surprising as it is 139 pages long. It is yet another doorstop or telephone directory of a Bill. They come out of the Home Office at regular intervals and huge acreages of Norwegian or south American forests are destroyed to produce the paper for them. There are far too many Home Office Bills and while they are not wholly imperfect, they areas so many hon. Members have demonstrated todayriddled with imperfections that require close examination in Committee. However, this Bill will not receive the necessary close examination in Committee because it will be guillotined. All sorts of good amendments and criticisms will not be discussed as a result. We will have to rely on the other place to do our work for us. That is the end of the sermon.
	The Bill can be divided into three themespolice centralisation, extradition and amalgamation of police   and court functions. At least, those are the themes that have emerged from the debate today. It is uncontroversial to claim that of the 18 Members of Parliament, including the Home Secretary and the Chairman of the Select Committee, who have spoken in the debate, support for the Bill has been qualifiedexcept from the Home Secretary. Even the absent Labour Back Benchers who read out the Whips' notes were not entirely enthusiastic about the contents of the Bill. I look forward to hearing the Minister of State's enthusiastic endorsement of whatever it was that the Home Secretary said this afternoon, but the rest of us have serious concerns about the creeping centralisation of control over the police, of which this Bill is another example.
	The Government say that their powers under the Bill to exercise authority over particular police authoritiesthey will have an easier task when there are only 12 instead of 43will be used only as a last resort. However, we need to place that claim in the context of the project to amalgamate police forces. I appreciate that the Bill is not about amalgamation of police forces, which will be achieved by executive decree by the Home Secretary. We have already had a written parliamentary statement from him last Friday, when a sparsely attended House was presented, at a late hour, with some proposals for the amalgamation of a certain number of police forces. I doubt whether we shall ever have an opportunity again to deal with the issue in a proper parliamentary way. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire) pointed out in a telling speech, that so-called promiseundertaking might be a better wordnot to use the powers except in exceptional circumstances is absent from the Bill. I have learned through bitter experience since 1997, when the Government came into office, that unless a promise is made at the Dispatch Box by a Minister and is recorded in Hansard, or is made in some other official written way, it is unlikely to be kept. So when the Government say that the powers will be used only as a last resort, I see that more as a threat than as a benign indication of intent.
	The Bill is the pathfinder for the regionalisation of police forces, and my hon. Friends the Members for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin), for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard), for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois), for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone), for Hornchurch, for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) and, of course, for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) made that very point. It is such an obvious point that it pains me that we have to keep on making it, but the Government still seem not to have taken it on board. The essential connection between the police and the policed is being loosened.
	There are more and more indications from the Government that they wish to pull in to Whitehall, disguised as strategic policy making, control over operations. Chief constables will have to follow the Home Secretary's directions or risk their jobs. I am not sure that the British public think that that is a proper way to proceed. We should always beware Government claims that the national policing improvement agency will
	assist police forces to deliver . . . national . . . priorities
	and
	support national implementation of the Home Secretary's key priorities for the police, as set out in the annual National Community Safety Plan.
	Such offers of help from this Government, with their history, should be viewed with great scepticism, and I trust that in Committee hon. Members on both sides of the House will follow the example of the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay). I hope that he is a member of the Committee, although I doubt that the Government will be brave enough to appoint him. He demonstrates every time he rises to his feet that the duty of a Member of Parliament, whether on the Floor of the House or in Committee, and after acknowledging the political party to which he or she belongs and that most of us were elected as members of a particular party rather thanas the fiction has itas individuals, is to hold the Government to account. If we do not do that, we might as well pack it in and not bother. I do not need to look far across the Chamber to find many hon. Members who seem to have given up on that duty.
	If crime and disorder reduction partnerships are so good and need to work with the basic command units, why will we see a reduction in their number? That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs and echoed by many others. Statutory basic command units and direct control by the Home Secretary seem to march hand in hand, and it is not a particularly controversial prediction to suggest that before long the Home Secretary and his Ministers will have their sticky little fingers all over the day-to-day detailed work of the police throughout the country. Power is being drawn into Whitehallother Members have used more colourful languageand as it goes, so too does real public accountability, a point well made by my hon. Friends the Members for North Essex, for Arundel and South Downs and for Bexleyheath and Crayford and, by implication, if not expressly, by many others.
	The second matter covered in the debate was extradition. The Bill is not directly to do with the UK's arrangements with the United States, but the treaty has been much discussed and it is of genuine and proper concern among the public and my hon. Friends, especially my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson). It seems to me that the purpose of all extradition treaties is to ensure that those who commit crimes, or who are suspected of committing crimes, in other jurisdictions cannot escape justice by going to another country. We do not extradite suspects to face the death penalty or torture, which is why we have memorandums of understanding with countries such as Libya, Syria, Jordan and Tunisia. Some of those memorandums have been implemented and some have not, but the mere fact that we need them suggests that the Government realise that extradition law and the need to protect our citizens from unjust extradition lawindeed, to protect any citizen, whether a UK national or not, from unjust extraditionis extremely important.
	There is a real sense of the injustice and lack of fairness in our current arrangements with the United States and although we cannot deal with them tonight, nor can we amend treaties by legislation, there should be ample room for proper, full, calm and considered discussion of the United States extradition arrangements in Committee and I trust that time will be provided for that purpose. It is not right for other jurisdictions to trawl in our jurisdiction with a finer net than we can use in theirs. If the principle of comity of nations is to mean anything, we need to revisit our treaty with the United States.
	The third theme of the debate was the amalgamation of police and court functions. The separation of powers should be not merely recognised as an important part of our constitution, but entrenched in legislation, especially when the conventions that uphold that separation in our largely unwritten constitution are being shown less respect by the Government day by day. For example, the issuing of penalty tickets by weights and measures inspectors may on the face of it seem a perfectly sensible administrative step, but the inspectors are being given the power to exercise those punitive powers by a police officer, not by the courts. The power of police officers to impose penalties under conditional bail arrangements should also be looked into in the context of a proper separation of powers. If we allow such things to be ignored as matters of tedious hindrance to a Bill that is at least partly meritorious, we let ourselves down, and we certainly let our constituents down.
	I was unable to be in the Chamber to hear some of the speeches, including that of the Chairman of the Select Committee, and I heard only the tail end of the speech of the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone). However, I do none of the speeches an injustice, nor do I paraphrase them unfaithfully, when I say that everyone, apart from the Home Secretary and, I dare say, the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety[Interruption.] I never anticipate what the right hon. Lady is about to say. I do not need to; she repeats herself with great frequency on every occasionnone the less, it is always a delight to listen to her.
	The three themes that I have identified are matters of concern and even though we shall not force a Divisionnor, I dare say, will the Liberal Democratsthe Government cannot allow our decision to let the Bill achieve Second Reading undermine the sincere and proper criticisms that have been made on both sides of the House in cross-party fashion.
	I want to finish by reminding ourselves of what the hon. Member for Thurrock had to say about police powers and mergers. He is concerned that we tend to reorganise when we do not know the answer to a problem. That problem was identified not by him, but by thinkers during the early centuries of the Roman empire.

Andrew MacKinlay: I was irritating them then, too.

Edward Garnier: Yes, the hon. Gentleman was.
	There is plenty of evidence that that governmental habit has been repeated decade after decade, so let me take my hat off to the Governmentthey win no prizes for originality, but they certainly win prizes for lifting up the pot plants to see what the roots are doing.
	I want to end now because the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality is getting restless, and I think that he would like to be elsewhere. I want him and his colleagues to have the opportunity to thinknot something that he or they do often, but he may as well have the opportunity.

Stephen Pound: The hon. and learned Gentleman has really caught the mood of the House.

Edward Garnier: I have, have not I?
	I invite those hon. Members who will serve on the Committee in due course to use that opportunity to improve the Bill, to make it one that recognises the difference between the courts and the police and between the prosecution and judgesbetween the various limbs of our constitutionand if they do all that, although I am not hugely confident, the Bill that returns for debate on Report and Third Reading may well be a better one, but I shall not hold my breath.

Hazel Blears: I am sorry that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) has had such a frustrating day. He is clearly far too well connected in the worlds in which he moves. Perhaps I can suggest that he would not have such a frustrating day if he did his jury service in Manchester or some far-flung part of the United Kingdom. I am grateful to him for finding time to come to the House, but I am disappointed that he has indulged in some fairly gratuitous remarks and some fairly patronising comments. I shall try to respond to the far more constructive contributions that have been made by hon. Members on both sides of the House. If the hon. and learned Member for Harborough is to join us in Committee, I look forward to many hours of discussing the intricacies of such decisions. Unfortunately, he may well be on jury service, and we will be denied the pleasure of his company.

Stephen Pound: In Salford.

Hazel Blears: I would not necessarily mention Salford; I said that the hon. and learned Gentleman could come to Manchester, which is very different from saying that we would welcome him in Salford.
	The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who opened the debate for the Opposition, emphasised, as did a number of his Opposition colleagues, that in his view, the Bill was very much about centralisation. I simply tell him that he is wrong about centralisation, and about all the provisions of the Bill. He is relatively new to his post speaking on police reform. If he cared to examine the White Paper, Building Communities, Beating Crime, which we originally published in November 2004, he would see that it represented a significant departure from where policing had been until that point. That White Paper was about engaging local communities, building neighbourhood policing and introducing neighbourhood police teams that would work with local residents to set priorities. When we debated that White Paper, it was a bit of a revolution, because we were making a huge step change.
	What I have heard in tonight's debate is that Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members have come on to our territory of localism, empowerment, neighbourhood policing and community engagement. I am absolutely delighted that the new Conservatives have now decided that the territory that is popular with the public involves talking about neighbourhood policing and how we engage communities. When I first started to talk in the House about community engagement, I used to get horrified looks from the Opposition, who were asking themselves, What is this woman going on about? Neighbourhood teams and engaging local peopleso much claptrap! But what do we see now? They are desperate to be on the same territory.

Mark Pritchard: How can the Minister correlate moving the headquarters of West Mercia police from the three counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire to the urban base of Birmingham, with making policing more locally accountable and neighbourhood policing more visible to my constituents in Shropshire?

Hazel Blears: Any decisions about headquarters are operational matters for the police authority to consider in due course. The hon. Gentleman's community will be concerned about local neighbourhood policing. Only this Government have given a manifesto commitment that every community in England and Walesrural, urban and inner-city communities, and market townswill have a neighbourhood policing team. Local people will know the names of those involved, have their e-mail addresses and be able to set their local priorities. The Conservative Government never said that there would be local neighbourhood policing teams, so I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is wrong about centralisation.
	The Bill is about establishing neighbourhood teams, strengthening the basic command unit and the crime and disorder reduction partnership, locally elected members from local authorities playing a much more visible role, and conducting face-to-face briefings by the BCU commander and the local community safety portfolio holder to provide accountability. It makes provision for the community call for action that enables local residents to trigger action on the issues that are of concern to them. It also covers the standardisation of powers for community support officers. Each of those measures is about decentralisation and engaging local people. I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is way off target when he talks about centralisation.

Bernard Jenkin: I think that the right hon. Lady is a little confused. She is saying that the Secretary of State is taking powers to make those things happen. Would she like to pretend to the House that the Secretary of State is giving up powers? Is that what she is saying? No, she is not. She is saying that the Secretary of State is taking more powers to control the police. That is why we regard the Bill as a centralising measure.

Hazel Blears: I am certainly not confused. I am absolutely clear about what the Bill is designed to achieve. It is about implementing the things that were in our White Paper about devolving power to local people, engaging local communities and making sure that they have more of a say in what happens. The Government are committed to the tripartite balance that is important to ensure the independence of policing in this country. We want to make sure that we have appropriate powers at the centre, but that there are also strong operational powers, through the chief constables and particularly through BCU commanders. We will do that by putting them on a statutory footing.
	We also want to ensure that the new police authorities have increased powers. For the first time, their power to hold the chief constable to account will be in statute, and they will be given further powers through secondary legislation. In particular, they will be given the responsibility to consider diversity in policing, which will be an extremely important power for them to have. As I said, the increased involvement of locally elected councillors through the crime and disorder reduction partnerships will strengthen the tripartite balance so that we do not risk the danger of our policing losing its independence.
	The issue of elected police authorities was raised. More than 18 months ago we consulted, through the White Paper, about whether there should be directly elected police authorities. The rejection of that option was virtually unanimous. There were a number of serious objections, including the danger of extremist groups obtaining representation, particularly if there was a low turnout in the elections, and the potential for single issue groups to dominate. Liberal Democrat Members have raised some of those concerns in relation to the community call for action. Another consideration was a possible move to a much more short-term approach. If elections were approaching, there would be a real temptation to direct resources into the area of the greatest political and electoral advantage. There would be the potential for the politicisation of the various accountability bodies. Any move to direct elections needs to be thought about extremely seriously.
	As long ago as 1994, the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) said:
	I reject entirely the view . . . that there should be directly elected police authorities. That would be a recipe for politicising the police service.[Official Report, 26 April 1994; Vol. 242, c. 11213.]
	Presumably the Conservatives have entirely rejected their previous position and want direct election. Have they taken into account the whole series of serious objections that people have because of the possibility of direct elections skewing the important democratic balance of the tripartite relationship that has served this country extremely well by ensuring the independence, particularly the political independence, of our police service?

Nick Herbert: I am sorry that the right hon. Lady has so little faith in local democracy. She talks about maintaining the tripartite relationship. Will she comment on the concerns of the Association of Police Authorities, which has said:
	These provisions represent a fundamental constitutional change and a significant shift in the balance of power within the tripartite relationship. The APA will vigorously oppose them.

Hazel Blears: I understand the concerns of the Association of Police Authorities about putting the membership of police authorities into secondary legislation. I can give the assurance again from the Dispatch Box, as I have given it personally, that putting the requirements into regulations in secondary legislation is simply a way of making sure that we do not have to have primary legislation every time that we need a change. Given the provisions relating to health or to education, the provisions for membership are in secondary legislation. We are seeking to ensure that membership of police authorities can be flexible so that we do not have one rigid formula. Some police authorities will need to be larger than others to ensure democracy so that members of each authority can be represented on the new strategic authority.
	I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) broadly welcomed the Bill's provisions. He talked about seeking to get the balance right between driving performance, which has been absolutely key, and maintaining independence. My right hon. Friend has asked us to consider intervention powers carefully, and try to ensure that they are tailored to deal with the situations that might arise. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary referred to a backstop and a last resort. We do not want to be coming to the Dispatch Box whenever there is an issue involving local police forces. The powers need to be flexible enough to enable us to respond to situations that might arise as a result of a public inquiry, not simply a report from the inspectorate.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen welcomed the idea of the national policing improvement agency, and asked us to ensure that there will be provision for embedding good professional practice, such as professionalising investigation projects and the work that has been done by the National Centre for Policing Excellence. I can give him that reassurance. The first three mission-critical priorities of the improvement agency will be first, embedding neighbourhood policing; secondly, responding to demands to share information, as recommended by the Bichard inquiry; and thirdly, trying to ensure that all our forces throughout the country have better provision to respond to level 2 crimeserious and organised crime. That is one of the major factors behind the restructuring process that is taking place.
	My right hon. Friend also raised concerns about conditional cautions. I hope that I can give him some reassurance that it will be for the Crown Prosecution Service to decide whether a conditional caution is suitable and to identify the appropriate conditions. The hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) raised the issue as well. There is also the question of whether the police might take the lead in identifying cases that they think would be suitable for a conditional caution. It will be for the CPS to consider the conditions. There will be a separation between the arresting officer and the person who decides on the make-up of that caution, whether it is punitive or one of reparation. That is probably the right balance.
	I can also give the reassurance that the process is not designed to deal with serious and violent offenders. It is very much about first-time offenders, and particularly young people. I hope that if we can get the system to work quickly, someone committing criminal damage, for example, on a Wednesday, and admitting their guilt would be given a conditional caution, and could soon be out in the local park, perhaps, making reparation. I hope that there can be a quick connection between the offence being committed and punishment. That is particularly effective when dealing with young people.
	Concerns have been raised about parenting orders and ensuring that registered social landlords and local authorities are sufficiently trained and have the necessary expertise. My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) raised some similar issues, as did Liberal Democrats. There will be safeguards in place and we will issue statutory guidance. Many registered social landlords are now working in partnership with social services and education authorities as part of a multi-agency team to tackle antisocial behaviour, and we will ensure that they continue to operate in that way.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor) made a telling intervention highlighting the right of the community to set priorities for local action and to ensure that both the police and local authorities are called to account to tackle those matters. That is an illustration of the fact that the Bill is about devolution rather than centralisation.

Andrew MacKinlay: Clause 15 gives district councillors a duty to refer a complaint by a constituent to the appropriate committee of his or her council. I do not oppose that procedure; I can see some merits in it. However, there are two things that concern me. First, the constituent's expectations will be enormously high. Secondly, as far as I am aware, this is the first time that such a specific duty has been given to a local district councillor; it has not been done by any other service. I share the House's nervousness and hesitation about whether our councillors, even the best, are fully acquainted with what the duty will involve and what its ramifications are. How will they deal with those matters, and has there been any guidance or discussion?

Hazel Blears: I can assure my hon. Friend that I have had extensive discussions with the Local Government Association, which is pleased that we are giving local councillors a fundamental role. They will become advocates for their local community, and that is an entirely proper role for them to undertake. It is a new and innovative power to enable local residents to call to account not just the basic command unit commander but the local authority and other partners in the crime and disorder reduction partnership when action is not undertaken. That is an extremely powerful tool.
	Clearly more detail is required, including time scales, but the local councillor will play a central role. I did not want the creation of new police panels and panels to lead us to neglect the established mechanisms that work in local government. I fundamentally believe that local government and local democracy are extremely important, so making them work effectively will help to raise the esteem in which local councillors are held. If local authorities, including Liberal Democrat councils, do not use the antisocial behaviour powers as they should, local residents can use the community call for action to make them use them and address the problem of antisocial behaviour in their community.

James Brokenshire: rose

Hazel Blears: May I try to make progress in dealing with hon. Members' contributions? Otherwise we will all be here until 10 pm.
	The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone) supported some parts of the Bill, but was concerned about the community call for action. I hope that she is reassured that it aims to make councils, particularly Liberal Democrat ones, take action on certain issues. I was disappointed that she did not offer any positive proposals to try to address those issues, but in Committee she may provide more details. She also expressed concern about parenting orders, but I have dealt with the question of registered social landlords.
	I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend welcomed the coterminosity between basic command units and local authorities, which is important in tackling antisocial behaviour. I urge all hon. Members not to forget that more half of all antisocial behaviour orders are served on adults, so it is not simply young people who are involved in antisocial behaviour. Time and time again, I say that 95 per cent. of our young people are good and decent individuals who contribute to their communities and do a fantastic job. We are talking about a small minority, many of whom are adults, who simply do not abide by the rules.
	My hon. Friend raised the important issue of facilities for young people, as did several Opposition Members. The first chapter of the respect action plan talks about unlocking the positive potential of our young people. The plan highlights a significant investment by the Department for Education and Skills in youth facilities. About 500,000 for the average local authority was announced in the Chancellor's pre-Budget report, particularly so that young people themselves can be involved in shaping and designing facilities, whether an internet caf or a skateboard park.
	Even more significantly, 100 million of public funding will be used to back the Russell commission's proposals to enable 1 million extra young people to become involved in a range of exciting volunteering opportunities. There will be short-term and long-term opportunities. Some will be full-time and others part-time, and they will give young people a chance to do the things that, in some cases, only better-off young people have had the opportunity to do. Youngsters from disadvantaged communities will have the chance to undertake if not a gap year, a gap three months or a gap six months, which will help to widen their horizons. There will therefore be a huge amount of extra help in the respect plan to give young people more places to go and better things to do. We want to make sure that we involve people in more constructive activities to reduce crime and antisocial behaviour on our streets. I hope that my hon. Friend is encouraged by those proposals, but we need to make sure that Conservative local authorities take them seriously and involve young people in drawing up those proposals.
	The hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) was off the mark when he said that the Bill was about centralisation and talked about the powers of intervention. A few years ago in the police service there was not even a framework for performance. Police forces will admit that over the past few years there has been a huge transformation, with the introduction of the policing performance assessment framework, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman's local force will tell him about. If he thinks that localism means hands off and a free-for-all, and allowing high crime areas not to improve as fast as low crime areas, he is not doing his constituents a service.
	Localism or devolution is possible, but it must be balanced by proper standards. Among the police forces that the police standards unit have engaged with, in underperforming forces crime has fallen at twice the rate that it has in forces with which the unit has not engaged. That shows that intervention can work to drive up performance and reduce crime. Without such intervention we would not have seen the massive falls in burglary, vehicle crime and robbery over the past few years, for which all our constituents are grateful. The hon. Gentleman must get the balance right between giving people autonomy and allowing a free-for-all which leads to a postcode lottery in crime.
	I am disappointed that the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) is not in his place now. He has come and he has gone. Perhaps that will be his epitaph. He made an amusing reference to his constituent having been hoovered across the AtlanticI am not sure whether he was referring to J. Edgar in those terms. He raised concerns about the Extradition Act 2003, and serious concerns have been expressed by several hon. Members about extradition.
	Clearly, the Bill does not deal with the different evidential tests in the UK and in the United States of America, but I acknowledge the concern about the failure of the US to endorse the treaty. I can assure hon. Members that we are constantly pressing for the matter to be properly considered. I am sure it will be raised in Committee and that Members will want to make their points. The difference between the teststhat is, in terms of probable cause or informationis a product of the US Bill of Rights, which clearly cannot be amended. We have probably got the best balance that we can get in the treaty, but I understand hon. Members' genuine concerns about making sure that it is endorsed, and we will continue to press for that.
	I am delighted that the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) wants to help to build a culture of respect in the community. I am sure that he will support his police and local authority in doing that. He also supports community support officers. I can tell him that there will be 18,000 more CSOs over the next couple of years, in addition to the present 6,000 officers, and the community call for action will be a practical power to make sure that a light is shone on problems that may have persisted for months if not years, so that we can get things done. If neighbourhood policing works as we want it to, there will be less and less need to use the community call for action, because local people will genuinely be involved in getting things done.
	In an excellent contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Mrs. Hodgson) welcomed the powers for CSOs, especially in connection with truancy. She knows that children who are not in school are far more likely to be involved in crime and antisocial behaviour. She also raised issues concerning the ability of police officers to monitor football banning orders and to have access to people travelling to football matches.
	I undertake to consider my hon. Friend's proposals extremely carefully. I have no doubt that they will be raised in Committee. She made some telling points, which I know were well informed by her local Police Federation representative, with whom she is in close touch. She also supported the proposals for the extra search powers at airports, and I am grateful for that. As usual, she is practical and in touch with her community, and makes an excellent contribution.
	The hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard)

Tony McNulty: By contrast.

Hazel Blears: Yes; the hon. Member for The Wrekin is not present. He raised the subject of West Mercia police, which is an excellent police force, but is not currently assessed on level 2 issues involving serious and organised crime. His contribution was reasonable, and I assure him that the proposals are designed to strengthen protective services and provide resilience for neighbourhood policing. The commitment to the provision of neighbourhood policing, together with the national quality of service standards, should mean extra neighbourhood policing in both rural areas and high-crime areas.
	The hon. Member for The Wrekin said that he had not had an opportunity to debate the amalgamations on the Floor of the House, although he has had the opportunity to debate CSO powers. However, the Police Act 1996 was introduced by a Conservative Government, and we are proceeding under those provisions. The 1996 Act did not provide for referendums, so we are proceeding in the accepted way.
	I entirely reject the proposition advanced by the hon. Member for The Wrekin that morale in the police service is low. The Police Federation, the superintendents, the Association of Chief Police Officers and Unison all see merit in the proposals to move to larger more strategic forces, which will give us more capacity and resilience.
	The hon. Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire) discussed centralisation, which I have dealt with. He also discussed the establishment of the single inspectorate, which is not about saving money. We anticipate spending the same amount of money, although we may make some marginal efficiency savings. The inspectorate of prisons is important, particularly given the human rights issues concerning the treatment of prisoners in custody. We must bring the inspectorates together, but we have given an undertaking that we will not abolish the role of the prisons inspector until we are satisfied that the new combined inspectorate can deal with such issues properly.
	The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) discussed children and young people. I am delighted that she now welcomes the role of CSOs, and if she examines clause 4(2), she will see the provision on proper training and CSO powers. I confirm that I am working incredibly closely with the Minister for Children and Families in the Department for Education and Skills, the Minister of Communities and Local Government in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on all the issues in the respect plan.
	I was delighted by the generosity of the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole in admitting that parenting orders can be extremely effective. Many parents say that they wish that they had had parenting orders years ago, and that those orders are the best things that have happened to their families.
	The hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) discussed persistent and prolific offenders. He wants the Bill to give police community support officers the power to disperse people outside as well as inside dispersal zones. The proposals for dispersal orders were fought hard by Liberal Democrat Members, and we now have provisions to disperse groups within an area. General dispersal orders would probably stretch things too far, but I understand the passion with which the hon. Gentleman made that point, because he wants to ensure that the community is safer. I think that we have struck the right balance on dispersal orders, which local authorities can use to make communities significantly safer.
	The hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Carswell) wants to see the introduction of elected sheriffs and, as he described it, real localism. As I have said, we have some concerns about politicisation and the possibility of police authorities being taken over by those who shout loudest, and there is the possibility of extremist involvement, too.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) made some excellent points about longer sentences for violent crime, and he knows that the Violent Crime Reduction Bill includes measures covering guns and knives. He said that he has a large river frontagealthough I think that it is his constituency that has the large river frontage, rather than him. That means that he has an excellent knowledge of immigration issues and problems involving ports and borders. He called again for the creation of a dedicated force to address such matters, and we are making sure that the police force, special branch and immigration officials work more closely together to deliver a joined-up service. The current system probably does not go far enough for my hon. Friend, and I am sure that he will continue to press us. He also mentioned travel information and extradition; I am sure that he, like us, will continue to press for the endorsement of the extradition treaty.
	The hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois)an abundance of Essex men spoke in the debatewelcomed neighbourhood policing, and asked for continuity in police appointments. That is a genuine point. North Wales adopted a system whereby the neighbourhood policing teams committed for a period of two to three years on a contract basis, which has enabled them to build relationships with their local community. That is the kind of development that I would want to see. However, these are operational matters for the chief constable; they are not to be dictated from the centre but decided locally.
	I acknowledge the hon. Gentleman's strength of feeling about mergers, which he shares with other Members from Essex. We will take advice from the professionals at Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary, who will give us their considered assessment of the ability of the forces to cope with level 2 serious and organised crime. I know that the hon. Gentleman will want to ensure that his constituents are properly protected and at the same time have good, effective neighbourhood policing.

Mark Francois: I am grateful to the Minister for acknowledging the strength of feeling in the county of Essex. She said that the Government would take advice from the professionals. No doubt they will. Will they also take advice from the most senior police officer in Essexthe chief constable, Roger Baker, who also wants his force to stand alone?

Andrew MacKinlay: And advice from a senior Labour Back Bencher?

Hazel Blears: How can I possibly resist the blandishments of my hon. Friend?
	I can assure all Members that I take the views of chief constables extremely seriously, including those in areas where they have reached the conclusion that larger more strategic forces are the right way forward, because they have the capacity and resilience to cope with major crime, counter-terrorism and public order issues. I am awaiting the final assessments from HMIC for the local force of the hon. Member for Rayleigh, and announcements will be made in due course. I acknowledge his concern, but I query his saying, If it ain't broke, don't fix it. HMIC's advice to us has been that the 43 force structure is no longer fit for purpose. Any responsible Government would be negligent if they ignored that advice and did not take steps to ensure that we fix it as far as we possibly can.
	I was a little disappointed by some of the responses from Conservative Members. I think that they have lacked a bit of courage. Let me commend to them the recent speech on police reform by the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), who said:
	the Conservative Party I lead will not flinch from saying what needs to be said, and doing what needs to be done . . . Unless we have the courage and the determination to pursue radical police reform, we will never build the safer communities we all want to see.
	The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) talked about the royal commission that lasted two years and was followed by a further period of implementation. If we wait for four years to do anything about police reform, we will not be taking the radical steps that we need to make a difference.
	I say this to hon. Members: have courage, be prepared to reform, and do not cleave to the old ways that are not serving our communities as we want them to be served. We need to strengthen neighbourhood policing. The Bill will put in place structures, accountability mechanisms, devolution and involvement of local communities to enable us to do exactly that, while providing us with forces that are able to protect our communities against the threats from serious and organised crime that will unfortunately grow in future.
	I hope in Committee to be able to persuade hon. Members from all parties that they can be brave enough to go with radical reform that will drive down crime and give us the kind of policing service that we can continue to be proud of, and which will serve our communities even more effectively in the years to come. I commend the Bill to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill accordingly read a Second time.

POLICE AND JUSTICE BILL (PROGRAMME)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 83A(6) (Programme motions),
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Police and Justice Bill:
	Committal
	1. The Bill shall be committed to a Standing Committee.
	Proceedings in Standing Committee
	2. Proceedings in the Standing Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 28th March 2006.
	3. The Standing Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
	Consideration and Third Reading
	4. Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
	5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
	6. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.
	Other proceedings
	7. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed.[Mr. Alan Campbell.]
	Question agreed to.

POLICE AND JUSTICE BILL [MONEY]

Queen's recommendation having been signified
	Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 52(1)(a) (Money resolutions and ways and means resolutions in connection with Bills),
	That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Police and Justice Bill, it is expedient to authorise-
	(1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of
	(a) any expenditure incurred by a Minister of the Crown by virtue of the Act;
	(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable by virtue of any other Act out of money so provided;
	(2) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund.[Mr . Alan Campbell.]
	Question agreed to.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I propose to put together the Questions on motions 4, 5 and 6.
	Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Criminal Law

That the draft Community Order (Review by Specified Courts in Liverpool and Salford) Order 2006, which was laid before this House on 19th January, be approved.

Social Security

That the draft Social Security (Contributions) (Re-rating and National Insurance Funds Payments) Order 2006, which was laid before this House on 25th January, be approved.

Electricity

That the draft Renewables Obligation Order 2006, which was laid before this House on 31st January, be approved.[Mr. Alan Campbell.]
	Question agreed to.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
	That, at the sitting on Tuesday 7th March, notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 16 (Proceedings under an Act or on European Union documents), the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motion in the name of Mr Ivan Lewis to take note of various European Union documents relating to financial management not later than three hours after their commencement; proceedings may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.[Mr. Alan Campbell.]

WELSH AFFAIRS

Ordered,
	That Mrs Madeline Moon be discharged from the Welsh Affairs Committee and Albert Owen be added.[Joan Ryan, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]

ROYAL TOURNAMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.[Mr. Alan Campbell.]

James Brokenshire: I am grateful for the opportunity to highlight the royal tournament, which was a feature of the national calendar until 1999. Each year for 119 years, it was a showcase event for the armed forces and a way for the public to gain appreciation of their work. It featured much pageantry, with mass bands, cavalry displays by the Royal Horse Artillery and other set-piece demonstrations of the skill and training of the armed forces. I am delighted that the Under-Secretary has entered into the spirit of that pageantry with his smart and elegant dress this evening. That pageantry was part of the royal tournament for 119 years and we have a little of that here tonight.
	The royal tournament also highlighted the serious side of the work of the armed forces, with mock battles fought by Gurkhas, Royal Marines and other special units. There was the royal naval field gun competitionin many ways, the high point of the eventwhich showed the physical strength and prowess of those involved. I remember watching the royal tournament every year on the television as I was growing up, and the sense of spectacle that brought the work of the military service into focus. It gave an important sense of nationhood and country as well as offering the opportunity to appreciate the work of armed forces personnel past and present.
	In 1998, the Ministry of Defence announced that the tournament would be scrapped, to be replaced by a more modern event. In a BBC press report, the then Defence Secretary, now Lord Robertson, said:
	The Royal Tournament has served us well for a great many years, but as we approach the millennium, it is timely for us to take a look at this traditional event. This is a new beginning, not an end of the tournament and my aim is to make it more relevant and modern whilst retaining an element of pageantry.
	The event that was held at Earl's Court for many years had experienced some problems with attendance and it was probably the right time to hold some sort of review of it. Lord Robertson's comments when the announcement of disbanding the traditional royal tournament was made gave the impression that a review would be conducted and that something would continue.
	A Ministry of Defence Press release, which was issued at the start of the final royal tournament in 1999, echoed those sentiments. Lord Robertson said:
	The Royal Tournament has served us well for a great many years but as we approach a new millennium it is necessary to take a fresh look at this event. The Royal Tournament has in recent years lost audiences, money and deepened overstretch in the forces. It is time to reinvent and reinvigorate the shop window of Britain's military mission. From 2001 onwards we will carry forward the spirit of the Royal Tournament by running a major showcase event in London. This will be a new Military Tattoo held each summer within the spectacular and historic setting of the Horse Guards' Parade, with ceremonial elements, massed bands and pageantry.

Philip Hollobone: I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate on such an important subject. Does he share my view that the long-established and much-regarded royal tournament fell victim to the unfortunate and misguided principles of cool Britannia, which dominated the early years of the current Administration?

James Brokenshire: It is difficult to judge. The Under-Secretary may be the best person to respond to that point, but there was a sense at the time that more traditional things were out of fashion. It is possible that the royal tournament was caught in the attempt to go for a more modern approach. Indeed, the statements by the then Defence Secretary emphasised that sense of modernity, even though I have to say that there was a need to review the role and structure of the royal tournament to reflect changes within the armed forces and the more modern service that we now have. There was certainly a good opportunity for a review.
	Although one can debate the merits of the argument, Lord Robertson certainly appreciated the need to retain a high-profile national event to showcase the tremendous work of our armed forces. On the basis of those comments, I wondered why I could not recall reading or hearing about what sounds like a significant high-profile event that was intended to follow on year after year. I therefore asked a written question on how many times the royal tournament had been replaced by a military tattoo at Horse Guards parade in London, as Lord Robertson's comments had suggested would be the case. The Minister replied:
	Following the last Royal Tournament in 1999 it has been replaced once by a military tattoo at Horse Guards Parade. The Department continues, however, to participate in a wide variety of smaller events such as Open Days, ships visits, County Shows and showcase events such as the Edinburgh Military Tattoo and the Fairford Royal International Air Tattoo.[Official Report, 20 December 2005; Vol. 440, c. 2763W.]
	Despite Lord Robertson's initial statements that there would be a military tattoo in London each summer, the much-vaunted replacement was, in fact, only a one-off.
	I hope that the Minister will be able to explain in his response what changed. Lord Robertson clearly recognised that the royal tournament was a significant and important event to showcase the work of our essential modern military forces. As we have heard, he described it as
	the shop window of Britain's military mission.
	With significant overseas commitments and increasing financial constraints on our armed forces, if it is now simply impossible to organise such a large-scale event on an annual basis, perhaps we could understand the decision-making process that has taken place. However, I am not awareI am sure that the Minister will correct me if I am wrongthat any such formal explanation has been given. If that is not the reason, why has Lord Robertson's commitment not been followed through?
	Against that backdrop, it is hardly surprising that one of my constituents, Mr. Steve Thomas of Bruce avenue, Hornchurch, wrote to me in the following terms:
	Do you remember the Royal Tournament, which was held at Earls Court every year and which was chopped by the Government in 1999? You probably saw it as a kid. I went to it many times over the years from age 10. It was always a great night out and we all got to meet our armed forces in person. I believe it was also very effective in gaining future recruits to the service. It was a tragedy when it was so brutally ended after 119 years. Yes 119 years of history means nothing to this present government. At the time it was claimed that it was costing too much and that it was far too patriotic . . . what nonsense. It was a very popular show right up to the end. We need to restore some pride in our country and there's no better way than to have an annual display of 'skill of arms' held in London as it was for 119 years.
	I am sure that that sentiment is shared by many people in the House and across the country. Perhaps those comments were compounded by the lack of a proper replacement for the royal tournament as was previously promised, a lack of clarity as to why circumstances had changed and about what was to follow and by the fact that we do not really have a national event to mark the service of our armed forces and to recognise their tremendous efforts for this country.
	I note that the Minister has announced the formal establishment of a veterans' day on 27 June, which we are told will happen each year and act as an important opportunity to thank veterans for their contribution to our life in the UK today. In his letter to all hon. Members, he said:
	It will be a day to focus on veterans of all ages and to celebrate and raise public awareness of their achievements and the contribution they have made and continue to make to society. We will also seek to highlight the support and advice available to veterans from official and voluntary sources and the role of ex-Service organisations. Finally the day will offer opportunities to celebrate the service by those currently serving in the Armed Forces.
	I welcome this event. It is important that we have a veterans' day to mark the service of all those who have made such a huge contribution to the life of this country. Obviously, we have Remembrance day each November, on which we remember those who have given their lives in the service of this country, and it is important that we continue to recognise their service year after year. I am proud that we have a significant Remembrance day event each year in Hornchurch; it is an important part of our calendar, and rightly so. I hope that veterans' day will sit alongside that, to recognise the veterans of the armed forces who have given service to this country, but who are still very much alive, even though they may have suffered injuries and other trauma as a consequence of that service.
	I welcome the proposals for a veterans' day. I hope that it will be a successful event every year, that it will result in the individual events that the Minister hopes will take place up and down the country, and that it will become an important part of our national life. Before this debate, I was heartened to see that there was to be some recognition of armed forces personnel, and that the veterans' day was in part intended to recognise the service of current members of the armed forces.
	I was also heartened to see that the inaugural event would involve a high-profile celebration in London. I wonder whether I may read into the Minister's announcement that that might be some kind of high-profile tattoo or replacement for the royal tournament, as was promised by Lord Robertson. However, the Minister's letter did not go on to say that the high-profile event in London would be an annual event. My concern, therefore, is that we could end up in a similar situation to the one that pertained before, namely, that we should be given the promise of an inaugural event to mark veterans' day, but that after that it would be spun off into smaller, more local or regional eventsas the Minister's letter seems to suggestimportant though those are.
	It is important to have a high-profile national event in London to attract the attention of the media and of the public to something as important as this. I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify this matter because his proposals appear to be for a one-off event, rather than a commitment to an annual high-profile event in London that would act as a proper way to thank armed forces personnel, past and present.
	We need a meaningful opportunity to demonstrate the capabilities and sheer professionalism of our soldiers, sailors, air crew and support staff, and that was what the royal tournament did. It provided that focus. Yes, perhaps it needed reform, but it had the ability to garner support and to focus the attention of the television companies and the media generally on the tremendous work that our armed forces do in the service and defence of this country. Our armed forces do an outstanding job in defending this country and its interests overseas in increasingly difficult, dangerous and complicated situations. It is important that there is a significant national event in London, the capital, to recognise that work and show our appreciation for everything they do.
	The royal tournament provided that opportunity for 119 years. For all the men and women who put their lives on the line for this country, I urge the Minister and his Department to have a rethink and provide a suitable replacement for the royal tournament so that we have a proper opportunity to pay tribute to our armed forces personnel and everything they do.

Don Touhig: I thank the hon. Member forHornchurch (James Brokenshire) for his kind comments on my sartorial elegance this evening. I have just come from a dinner in Speaker's House, where I was addressing the armed forces parliamentary scheme. Due to the change of business, it was necessary to come to the Chamber as quickly as possible. Perhaps I shall set a new standard.
	I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and thank him for his early-day motion, in which he pays great compliment to the servicemen and women of this country. I am sure that we all agree with his sentiment that the vital work the services do should be publicly appreciated. Our difference will be on the best way to do that and, in particular, how best we inform the public about the work of our services.
	Historically, we have used a range of means to do that, including tournaments and tattoos, but those activities have, by necessity, changed and evolved with the times. Old formats have given way to new, and what once was a good way to inform and entertain people is no longer judged to be so.
	The hon. Gentleman is right in saying that the royal tournament ran for 119 years, and for much of that time it was hugely popular. The then Secretary of State recognised that fact in the House in October 1999, when he paid a warm and well deserved tribute to those who had organised and participated in the tournament over the years. On the same occasion, however, he had to point out that attendance at the last few tournaments had dwindled quite considerably. In turn, that meant that the 1998 tournament incurred a loss of 400,000. The tournament was a charity, so making such a loss was a significant problem.
	There may have been a number of reasons for the fall in attendance, but we could not avoid the fact that, in part, it was due to changed public tastes and interests. The tournament was no longer attracting either the size or type of audience we wanted, which meant it no longer provided us with the showcase we needed.
	Those problems were compounded by the considerable demand on personnel that the tournament imposed. As the House was informed in October 1999, a minimum of 30,000 man-days per year were needed to run the tournament. Had it still met our publicity needs, that might have been justifiable, but when it no longer did so, the commitment became unacceptable. In sum, the royal tournament was an event of its time. It had served us well, but as times changed a new approach was required, as the hon. Gentleman conceded.
	The hon. Gentleman also rightly pointed out that the initial plan had been to replace the royal tournament with an annual tattoo on Horse Guards parade and a regional event. Those activities were referred to as the Defence 2000 series of events. Between 2000 and 2002, events did take place. There was a tattoo on Horse Guards, which he referred to, in 2000, and in 2002 the Royal Navy's international festival of the sea was used to showcase equipment and capability. They were a success, but circumstances and tastes were still changing.
	It has always been our aim to make the best use of existing regional events. The services already participate in hundreds of public events annually, as the hon. Gentleman conceded, and those range in size from school visits through to major set piece national events such as the royal international air tattoo at Fairford and the Edinburgh military tattoo. Those all provide opportunities to inform and educate the public on the outstanding contribution made by our servicemen and women.

Peter Bone: When the royal tournament was running, was it not given complete television coverage each year? Does that not represent something of a loss in publicity terms?

Don Touhig: I believe that it did receive television coverage, although I do not know how many people watched. However, my point is that numbers dwindled considerably over the last few years of the tournament.

Philip Hollobone: The Minister mentioned the Edinburgh military tattoo, which is a huge success. Why does he think that it has continued to attract crowds, whereas crowds were lost from the royal tournament?

Don Touhig: I cannot say. I believe that the tattoo is a special event in Edinburgh and that there are celebrations at that time, but I can speak only from experience of the royal tournament, whose audience was dwindling. What I say later may help the hon. Gentleman to understand my argument.
	I think the House will agree that since the announcement of the inception of the Defence 2000 series of events, our armed forces have been increasingly busy. I am sure that the House will also agree that operational commitments must always be paramount. In May 2004, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence and the Minister responsible for the armed forces told the House that the Defence 2000 series was to be discontinued. The principal reason was that during a period of high levels of operational commitment and the associated demands placed on service family life, it was felt that the greatest benefits would be gained from focusing on existing events. Resources were already committed to those events, and many were already sharply focused on specific audiences such as visiting schools and potential recruits.
	However, the decision was also based on changing public tastes. Our research shows that people increasingly look to a more complex range of sources for their information. That applies particularly to the young people who are potential recruits, and who were once the backbone of those who attended the royal tournament.
	In the era of the internet and multi-channel television, tastes have changed and diversified. That does not mean that shows and events no longer have a place; rather, it means that we must now engage the public with a broader spectrum of more sophisticated approaches. Of course, our cadet organisations still provide a marvellous opportunity for young people around the country to enjoy challenging activities in a military context. Given the impressive range of events and activities in which the services are already involved, it was concluded that there was no longer a requirement for another military tattoo. Our position on that has not changed. For that reason, we cannot agree with the hon. Member for Hornchurch that we should examine the options for re-establishing an annual military tattoo in London.
	The hon. Gentleman also spoke about veterans day. Veterans day follows last year's very successful veterans awareness week. That week came at a difficult time. We experienced the July bombing, and the country rallied. There was also the special commemoration of the anniversary of the end of the second world war. We decided that there should be a veterans day every year. I have proposed 27 June: on whatever day of the week it falls, the date will remain the same. I believe that on that day there should be a national event of some sort in the capital.
	I also want it to be understood that veterans come in all shapes and sizes. Every year, 23,000 people leave the forces. A veteran is not necessarily someone who fought in the last war or did national service; a veteran could be someone in his thirties who has done some service and has now returned to civvy street. I want to convey that message to the country.
	When I attended an armistice parade in my constituency, I talked to a chap who was covered in medals. I said, Today we are announcing the extension of the veterans badge. He said, It does not apply to me, Don: I am not a veteran. I asked him what he meant. He said, I did not fight in the last war. There is a perception that a veteran is someone who fought in the last war. We need to get the message across that veterans do come in all shapes and sizes, and in all ages. Although I think it important for us to have a national event in London, I hope that Members throughout the House will promote events in their constituencies to honour our veterans. Such events would not be intended to replicate armistice day, a solemn and special occasion on which we remember our dead. They would be more of a celebration of the commitment and sacrifices that people have made to our services over the years.

James Brokenshire: I am heartened by what the Minister has said in the context of veterans. I agree that veterans come in all shapes and sizes. Indeed, I argue that veterans include current service personnel who have served and defended this country. Will he clarify what is intended by the national event? What he has said goes some way to assuaging my concerns about having a national event that recognises and celebrates the work of service personnel both past and present.

Don Touhig: I am tempted to stray down the path that the hon. Gentleman entices me to go down but, if he will bear with me and be patient, I expect to make a statement very shortly setting out details of how we propose to celebrate veterans day this year. If he and other colleagues will be patient another week or so, I hope then to bring forward quite extensive information and proposals on what we plan to carry out.
	Having explained our position, may I briefly outline what we are doing to keep the public informed about the excellent work of our servicemen and women? First, we are focusing resources on some of the existing shows and events that we attend. Both within and between each of the services, there is increased emphasis on supporting high-priority events. Those hon. Members who were at the London boat show in January will have seen a combined Navy and RAF presence. Further similar joined approaches are being considered. We are piggy-backing on to events where we can offer the forces a showcase, which perhaps would not have happened if we had stayed with the tattoo.
	In addition to the boat show, the services participate in the London motor show and the London air show. When those are added to the considerable number of state ceremonial events that take place in London, there is certainly no lack of opportunity for members of the public to see the services in London.
	Secondly, we are increasingly using events designed to commemorate past endeavours to highlight current achievements. Again, those of us who witnessed the marvellous celebrations last summer that marked the 60th anniversary of the end of the war will have seen plenty of evidence for that. The historical link between the generations was one of the commemoration's main themes. Plans are in train to mark the 150th anniversary of the Victoria cross and the George cross. Those will be among the activities on which we propose to make announcements this year.
	Across the Department, an increased range of activities is being more specifically targeted at key audiences. The wide range of activities in schools and colleges bears testimony to that. Those go from service career adviser visits through to a highly developed curriculum support activity, delivered by a mixed team of military and civilians, on the theme of citizenship.
	Having already talked about our increasingly sophisticated audiences, I should mention the work being done on all the MOD websites. Both the Army and the RAF sites are currently undergoing significant enhancements and the new look MOD website went live three weeks ago. Even more technologically ambitious projects are ongoing, including the streaming direct on to mobile phones of images from the Army team that will shortly be climbing Mount Everest. As the hon. Gentleman conceded, we are looking for new ways to promote knowledge and understanding of the experience of our forces.
	As I said, I have just come from a dinner at Speaker's House. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman was not there. If he had come, he may have talked to colleagues in the services. They appreciate the huge contribution that the royal tournament made in the past, but from the conversations I hadthe few conversations, I admitthey do not think that resurrecting the royal tournament would be the answer in seeking to promote knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the value of our forces.
	I happily endorse the praise that has previously been given to the royal tournament and similar events. They served their purpose well in their time, but times have changed and so have the public's expectations. Increasingly, we must take a more sophisticated approach, embracing new technologies and new communication channels. The existing range of public events still have their place in our portfolio, but they must now be supported by other approaches, which are often more effective. Our modern, high-tech, mobile and agile armed forces want and deserve to be shown off. The medium of a military tattoo is, I fear, not the right way to do that, but I am open to any suggestions, advice or comments from any Member of this House, so that we can ensure that we get across to our people the message of the huge commitment made by our servicemen and women.
	I have no doubt that our servicemen and women serving us around the world are held in very high regard in the hearts of the British people; we owe them a great debt and it is important that we continue to acknowledge that. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will join me in recognising that fact, and if there are other, more appropriate ways in which we can demonstrate what our armed forces do in the service of their country, we will certainly pursue them. I welcome any such proposals.
	I am sorry that I cannot give the hon. Gentleman, who wanted restoration of the royal tournament, better news, but I hope that, having considered my remarks, he will feel that we are going down the right road and that he, too, has a contribution to make in helping us to find new ways to promote interest in, and knowledge and appreciation of, our armed forces.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Adjourned accordingly at nineteen minutes to Ten o'clock.